5 Weird Twitter Accounts You Need To Follow Right Now

You think you know what Twitter is, don’t you? You’ve heard foggy old newscasters pontificate about how it sparks revolutions in the Middle East, and you’ve listened to IMC professors talk about using it to build your “personal brand” (like, don’t forget, DON’T EVER FORGET that retweets do not fucking equal endorsements).

Although you were initially freaked out by seeing all your friends constantly retweeting a middle-aged guy in a speedo, you’ve come to enjoy reading Rob Delaney tweet at Wolf Blitzer asking if Flowers For Algernon was a true story. You know how to use hashtags to draw attention to your tweets from people you’ll never meet, but are still self-aware enough to laugh when Schmidt says “hashtag” out loud on New Girl.

All in all, you feel confident in your grasp of Twitter, like the #millenial that you are.

Oh, child.

My poor, poor child.

Five Lessons I’ve Learned On Summer Break

Also coincidentally where Coors Light comes from.

“You know nothing, BJ Taintz.”

You’re not quite right, hypothetical reader with the voice of Ygritte. I know that it’s summer right now, for one thing.

That’s right, summer: the season of sunlight, flowers, bugs, and beaches. Perfect time to sit at a computer all day slaving away at an unpaid internship, right? Wrong, but hey, that’s the life we chose. But just because we’re too old to spend summer days eating grass (wait, am I the only one that did that?) doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons to be learned. Here’s what I’ve learned from a few summer weeks of laying around, gorging on Welch’s fruit snacks while reading A Dance With Dragons and pretending that the real world doesn’t exist.

Furor Scribendi: Zombies, Canadians, Rihanna, and Chet Haze (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Pretend to be Malcolm Gladwell)

Brother Jürgen Taintsdorf and Evander Jones trade e-mails regarding celebrity, sport, and all things culture.

Evander Jones:
Dear Brother Jürgen,

Took him long enough.

What follows is a pitiful attempt to be either the Bill Simmons to your Malcolm Gladwell or the other way around. If need be, however, I am willing to settle as the Ke$ha to your Flo Rida. Either way I’ll probably come off as a DoucheMcMuffin, even if I edit our email exchanges to make us both look far more witty than our faithful Sherman Ave readers could ever imagine. A tricky task, mind you, as I just kind of assume that all of our readers are beautiful women between the ages of 18 and 27 who harbor a fond appreciation for unreleased Smiths B-sides, The West Wing, and Morty Schapiro to go with their rabid readership of Sherman Ave.

How to Deal with the Stress of Finals

There are very few things worse than finals, including (but not limited to) Northwestern’s sports record and Casey Anthony. But don’t be sad! Here are nine annoyingly cheerful reminders coming from your favorite (occasionally) optimistic fuckhead.
1. Realize you will never be Morton Shapiro. You will never even come close enough to sniff his level of achievement. Accept it. Now the pressure is off. You’re welcome.
2. Remember that you could be this guy.

3. Or this guy.

4. Have sexy time with Brother Jürgen Taintsdorf. Not because it’ll make your day any better, but because it’ll brighten his. His favorite pickup line (“I’ve got a diverse background…in bed”) isn’t working like it used to.

5. Learn Kasey Huizinga’s Treatise On How To Head Bang: “You just have to feel it with your heart.” Let the rockout begin.
6. Stand on furniture or appliances and sing ridiculous music. You didn’t have any pride to begin with, right?
7. Appreciate the wonders of the world.
8. YOLO. So don’t worry, be happy.
9. Be thankful that you’re not Chet Haze. Unless you are, in which case, I’m so sorry.

Now get off Sherman Ave and go finish that paper.

Why Obama Makes Me Sad

Let me ask you a question. How many of the following have happened since Obama’s election?

1) World peace
2) End of racism/sexism/homophobia/animal cruelty
3) The whales are saved.
4) My dog is as badass as this.

He's killing pirates! What would Jack Sparrow say about that!?

So there we have it: our president, contrary to popular belief, is not a demigod. Oh damn. If there’s anything I dislike about Obama, it’s that his followers seemed to think that following his election, a perfect world would ensue. However, in a perfect world, Rick Perry would be dead and Katy Perry would be granted immortality. So quit slobbing on his knob, because he hasn’t really done much to move us in that direction.

Here’s my first beef with Obama: the guy’s voting record as a Senator basically screams “I Wanna Be President.” The Illinois senate records show that Obama has voted “present” on 130 motions, mostly on controversial issues. Voting “present” is essentially voting “meh,” as a lawmaker. You only say “meh” when you don’t have the energy or clarity to say “No, thank you, I have decided to disagree with the decision being decided.” In a parallel manner, voting “present” means a politician either doesn’t have an opinion or doesn’t want evidence that he has one, because opinions are usually offensive to someone. Having a solidified stance would mean he’d eventually lose voters, and again, the man has had his eyes on the Oval Office longer than Rebecca Black has been alive.

At least nobody has looked sexier while cutting prescription drug costs for medicare by 50%

Number two: Obama is from one of the most corrupt states in the nation. Did anyone question how the man whose record is as spotless as a baby’s ass* somehow gathered votes in the state that produced Blagojevich, Ryan, and the Daley dynasty? Just in case you’re not local, the Land of Lincoln hasn’t had much recent luck electing moral lawmakers. 6 of the last 9 governors are charged with white-collar corruption, and 4 of those were convicted and jailed for it. The most recent villain was caught attempting to ensure that his appointment for Senate seat had something in it for him. I’m not making wild accusations of corruption; I don’t think he’s Blago. I’m saying that Obama passed the healthcare bill like a true Illinois politician: buying the holdout votes with “There’s something in it for you, Nevada and Florida!” Washington, meet pay-to-play politics.

Here’s an excerpt from a recent Facebook status reposted by a friend of mine: “Things my president has done: Got Osama…check. Same wife for 15 years with no extramarital affairs….check. Only active President to receive Nobel Peace Prize while in office…check.” There are several things wrong with this, other than the obvious “please stop drooling and engage your mental cavity.” The first: don’t give him credit for finding Osama. OUR TROOPS DID. Give him credit for the things he’s done — getting minorities out there voting, repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and buying us a healthcare bill we didn’t want while teaching the country how Illinois does legislation.

But wait, there’s more: he can stay married! Without cheating! Give the man a prize! Speaking of prizes: I should really be past this by now. But Nobel Peace prize????? Didn’t old people use to have to DO shit for that????**

Not even comparable.

And to close: though I enjoy Al Green as much as the next person, I don’t give a rat’s ass if our president is “cute.” I want a president with a pair of balls*** and a goddamn voting record. Preferably the latter. Til then, I’m gonna hold this vote. If I want to interact with a cute older man, I will seek out Liam Neeson and Frank Sinatra. Frankie has a better voice, anyways.

Here’s to bipartisanship.

Brother Jürgen, please say you’ll still love me?

——————————————————————————————————————————
*Please ponder that metaphor. It was intentional.
**Also, congratulations to the original author of this quote for seriously qualified statements. “Only President to win Nobel Prize? Damn, there were four of those. Only President to do it while in office? Damn, that was three of them! Only President alive who’s won it? Fucking Jimmy Carter! Alright- he’s the only president we have RIGHT NOW who won the Nobel Peace Prize!”
***or, as a forwarded email from my mother instructed, “Balls are weak and sensitive. If you really want to get tough, grow a vagina. Those things take a pounding.”

Special thanks to Blake Wilson, whose Facebook feedback comparing Sherman Ave to the gastrointestinal contents at the end of the Human Centipede struck the perfect balance between offensive and motivating. Blake, don’t off yourself because of internet shenanigans; we’re still mourning Phoebe Black.

Other Things David Stern Should Veto

The most hated white man in the league since Toni Kukoc

When sports journalists heard about the NBA Commissioner’s probably ill-advised decision to veto a trade that would’ve sent New Orleans point guard Chris Paul to the Lakers, they practically pooped themselves with rage, railing about the end of the NBA with an apocalyptic despair that would’ve made Harold Camping proud. When I heard about the NBA’s decision, all I could think about was the goodness that could be accomplished by extending David Stern’s veto power, trigger-happy finger, and ‘screw it, I don’t care if I ruin the seasons of three teams’ attitude into other walks of life. Here are the fruits of that aforementioned thinking:

1. Rick Perry’s Presidential Campaign
Here at Sherman Ave we love Rick Perry. Oh wait, no we fucking don’t. No one in their right minds could ever stand to be in the same room, much less vote for, that intolerable shitmuffin. It now seems utterly ridiculous that people as intelligent as Mike Murphy actually thought that Perry could win the Republican nomination. Well, they were about as wrong as Custer’s last words. If only David Stern had stepped forward in August to stop this embarrassing shitshow of a campaign from ever launching.

His dreams were crushed by David Stern. M. Night Shyamalan's should be, too.

2. M. Night Shyamalan’s ability to make movies
So The Sixth Sense was maybe kind of okay. But I dare anyone to make it through The Happening without puking in a biological attempt to reject the atrocity from staying with you. Shyamalan made only one or two movies that could ever be considered ‘good,’ and everything since then has been so unbearably atrocious that Shaymalan should be prevented from ever tainting our eyes with such heinousness again. Unfortunately, the good people at Disney (and by “good people” I of course mean “stupid fucktards”) just keep signing off on his movies. Let’s get Stern in there to crush them the way he crushed Chris Paul’s dreams.

3. No Shave November
I’ll be honest, this year I tried doing No Shave November for the entire month, to see once and for all if I could really grow a beard. I can’t. And I’ve got news for everyone else who has tried it: you can’t either. You do look like an atrocious hobo, though. Congrats. Scumbag Steve would be horrified by your hygiene. Now let’s please agree to never do No Shave November again.

4. New Rebecca Black songs

Rosa Parks' personal hero

Katy Perry has no regrets — only love — about going all the way tonight. I have the same feelings about Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” Yes, it’s horrible, and yes, it probably shouldn’t exist, and yes, it speaks to some very heinous problems at the base of our modern society, but god damn is it funny. I’m glad it exists, and those two weeks where everyone in America absolutely refused to talk about anything else were just awesome. I feel bad for the hypothetical children I may or may not give birth to in the future because they will never have the experience of waiting at midnight for the release of Harry Potter books or movies, and I feel bad for them because they will never have the experience of going to school on March 18, 2011 (the Friday after the song came out) when everyone everywhere was singing “It’s Friday, Friday, GOTTA GET DOWN ON FRIDAY.” For two weeks it was fun to laugh, at the insipid songwriting, at the random rap verse that doesn’t make sense, at the problems with modern celebrity culture, but then those two weeks were over and we all moved on. DIDN’T WE?????

Apparently not. Apparently the ARK Music Factory thought that when 268,000 people disliked the “Friday” video, that meant “we love this, give us more please.” I hate to be the one to break this to you, Patrice Wilson, but when 268,000 people disliked the “Friday” video, it means they didn’t like it. At first, Rebecca Black was sad and kind of funny. Now she’s just sad.

5. Bill O’Reilly’s book about Lincoln
The only thing more ridiculous than the sentence “Bill O’Reilly wrote a book about the Lincoln assassination” is the sentence “Bill O’Reilly wrote a book about the Lincoln assassination that wasn’t true.” Yes. We live in a fucked up world. And while I think we have all accustomed ourselves to Fox News’s ridiculous excuse for news coverage, we don’t need them fucking up history as well. That’s Ross Packingham’s favorite subject!

6. “Ultimatum” by Jeph Loeb
If you’re a normal person, then it probably doesn’t mean anything to you when I say that Jeph Loeb fucked up the Ultimate Universe, but he did, and it is an intolerable atrocity.

Something doesn't seem right...

Quick nut graf: shortly after the dawn of the new millennium, Marvel Comics attempted to reinvigorate interest in their brand by creating an offshoot label, dubbed the Ultimate Universe, where they relaunched characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men as if their 40 year history didn’t exist, and the characters had been created in the year 2000. It worked. The stories were great, and their modern reworking of occasionally anachronistic Sixties concepts had a huge influence on Marvel’s later movie adaptations.

But in the year 2008, Marvel executives handed the creative reins of the Ultimate Universe to Jeph Loeb. It seemed like a sensible decision, as Loeb had won acclaim writing Batman at DC Comics. But whereas Loeb had done well on Batman with a strategy of utilizing Batman’s colorful cast and intriguing antihero sensibility, his plan for Ultimate Marvel was a little more like “destroy everything and kill every character.” His miniseries “Ultimatum” was basically a giant shit all over the Ultimate Universe, whose comics had helped spike my interest in the medium and which I still give to people who mention an interest in comic books, and I can no more forgive him for that than Eddie Murphy can forgive SNL for making one joke about him once.

And most importantly…

My First Quarter Grades
More important than any of the other things combined. I must admit, I got so caught up in college heinousness this quarter that I didn’t exactly get Will Hunting grades. Sure, it’s not like I stayed up past 2 am sequestered in the library every night of reading week preparing for my Ancient Philosophy final, but if Stern could have some words with Morty re: my grades, that would be dandier than Sebastian Flyte.

If that isn’t a convincing reason for giving David Stern a time machine and being done with it, I don’t know what is.