Thursday, February 26, 2009

Is It Just Me, Or Is Everything Shit?: Insanely Annoying Modern Things by Steve Low and Alan McArthur with Brendan Hay

There are many things that annoy people now, from Z-list celebrities speaking out as pundits, to the sound of the "Intel Inside" Chime and Ads for Credit Cards.

While you may not agree with everything that annoys Steve Lowe, Alan McArthur and Brendan Hay are annoyed by, many of their rants are rather humorous, and add some wonderfully ironic information to the terms or things they are ranting about, such as the word "Bling" being coined by a rapper from a group called the "Cash Money Millionaires", and another entry points out that rappers used to be against rich people, but as soon as they get a chance to get money, they eagerly sell out.

Still another entry talks about using the word "porn" in a way that doesn't really make sense of what "porn" is. Calamity Porn? Are people getting off on it? No? Then it isn't really porn. Same with "Food Porn", "Car Porn" and so on.

Tom Cruise deserves his own entry, although he's mentioned an awful lot in the entry on Scientology as well, and the authors throw open the doors on what Scientology really teaches, and what they charge the big money for. Now that you know what its really about, you can say its less a religion or philosophy and reads more like a really bad Science Fiction story.

The biggest problem with this book is that a lot of the entries don't elicit anything more than a chuckle, so it's not really all that humorous, and reading them one after another is rather... tiring, at best. It's a book that's best absorbed in small doses over a long period of time, with other things to read in between.

While there were a few entries that evoked outright laughter, they were few and far between, so it's not a particularly funny book. Read it if you want to feed your inner Oscar the Grouch with an occasional snort or chuckle.

It's one of those books I didn't really like and didn't really hate. My feelings are somewhere in the "meh" middle.

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