The Daily Hated

31) Christian Mingle

2012-02-13T16:53:00.001-05:00

Nothing says, "We are devout Christians who believe the one true God of Abraham is the omnipotent creator of the universe who guides human events and whose power knows no bounds!" than suggesting His one shortcoming is that He just doesn't have the time or energy to point out which one perfect person He specifically designed to be your life partner, and so He outsources to a website with a terribly hilarious name.*

Whoa, ease up on the mingling there, Christians! Leave some room to let the Lord in.

(*In fairness, He's probably pretty busy hand-picking which Republicans should mount hilariously inept presidential campaigns)

Whitney Houston,151,599 others die on tragic, absolutely usual Saturday

2012-02-12T12:44:00.001-05:00

A recording artist who had a string of hits 25 years ago became one of 151,600 people who was claimed by disease, long-term drug abuse, automobile accidents, violence, starvation, and/or the mere passage of time on Saturday.

Among other victims were Earnest Ray Blackmon of Gulf Breeze, Florida; Andrew C. “Skeet” Gustafson of Clifton, Colorado; former skiing champion Jill Kinmont Boothe; at least 9 people in an avalanche in Kosovo; Roger S. Aaron (at left) of New York; and approximately 151,586 others.

They are survived by everybody except the approximately 151, 600 additional people who died in the meantime.

30) Origin Stories

2012-02-12T09:28:00.000-05:00

We. Know. Who. F*%king. Spider-Man. Is.

(Yes, you know all about the radioactive spider bite, and how Uncle Ben dies, and how Peter's really into science, and how he has to, like, face his inner insecurities about, like, whatever...but do you know the untold story of Spider-Man? It has to do with his love of pitted olives and an unusually intense high-stakes game of Yahtzee.)

29) People who refer to anything other than porn as "porn"

2012-01-18T16:12:00.000-05:00

Nice pictures of things you enjoy are not the same as porn.

For instance, this is a nice picture of food:

Looks pretty good, right? You'd probably look at that and be like, "Oh, what a nice picture of food. How delightful and unlike porn that is."

This is "food porn":

[Image removed by FCC, SOPA, PIPA, basic sense of decency]

You'd probably look at that and be like "HOLY [23 offensive terms removed by FCC, SOPA, PIPA], WHY, WHY, WHY???????!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!"

The Daily Hated SuperPac

2012-01-18T16:11:00.001-05:00

More than a year ago, reading the writing on the wall of the then-impending "age of civility"*, TDH fired all its interns, set fire to its offices, collected the insurance money, and left with its editors' pride and sterling reputations intact.

Thanks to the Supreme Court, we are back! Well, not us, because that would be illegal, but rather pro-us anonymous corporate donors who will pay for posts on this blog that serve as posts from us but are, in fact, completely independent, issue-based posts that may happen to be, purely by coincidence, entirely indistinguishable from the sorts of posts that you would have expected to find here if we coordinated with Americans for a Hated Day in any way, which we don't, because it's illegal.

The whole thing can be explained by watching this simple, easy-to-follow educational video, which has in no way been pirated:

*Also, we were broke.

Jim Morrison will still be guilty of having been a dreadful human being

2010-11-11T13:40:00.002-05:00

Noted insanely overrated songwriter and dreadful, terrible, abusive asshole Jim Morrison might be pardoned for an indecency-related conviction that pales in comparison to the shitty, awful douchebag he was the rest of the time.

Bleh

Some are encouraging outgoing Florida Governor Charlie Crist to make a pardon of Morrison's 1969 conviction in Miami one of his final acts as governor. Let's all hope he does, so that we can stop worrying about the fact that Morrison was convicted for a relatively petty and harmless offense and get back to pointing out what a miserable, self-absorbed womanizing alcoholic shitbag he was, and how the Doors weren't actually all that good.

Most interesting thing that could possibly happen on worst game show of all time happens

2010-11-10T12:00:00.004-05:00

Can we cancel it now?

It's a f*%ing horse, people.

2010-11-10T11:11:00.004-05:00

Briefly deprived of important things to worry about this past weekend, an entire civilized nation in the midst of a crushing economic quagmire and embroiled in bitter partisan divided got all upset that a horse named after a Police album didn't win a race that lasted, like, 15 seconds.

Above left or right: the stupid horse that had everybody all upset that it didn't achieve some kind of meaningless record only humans care about, since the horse itself probably couldn't even remember as far back as the previous morning.

Apparently, though, the horse took it in stride.

"If Zenyatta was disappointed, she sure didn't show it," reports the Associated Press.

Largely, this lack of disappointment-showing was probably due to the fact that horses neither understand the concept of nor possess the ability to express purely human emotions like "disappointment". Surprisingly, non-self-aware biological entities forced to compete in spectacles designed solely for the entertainment of their domineering human masters aren't especially bothered by win-loss ratios, regardless of what deluded journalists who are somehow employed despite openly demonstrating an utter failure to understand even the most basic principles of evolutionary biology want you to believe.

You'll get 'em next time, horse.

"Awful People Do Incredibly Unnecessary, Stupid Thing; Think You Should, Too"

2010-11-01T12:10:00.003-04:00

Or, at the very least, that could absolutely be a reasonable substitute for the actual headline of this inane New York Times article chronicling the lives of a handful of individuals with so much free time on their hands that they've actually been able to both come up with the idea of not bathing and/or using deodorant and champion said idea as a cause.

You know how you take one look at these people and go "Oh, yeah, I absolutely don't need a specific reason to know in my heart that I'd really want to never hang out with them"? Well, they gave you one anyway.

This article, like many articles before it, has a lot of words in it, all of which can be summed up with these select few:

"Some have concluded that deodorant is unnecessary after forgetting it once with no social repercussions*, or are concerned about antiperspirants containing aluminum, even though both the National Cancer Institute and the Alzheimer’s Association don’t share those concerns. Shampooing as little as possible can help retain moisture in dry locks and enhance curl shape, argue adherents of the practice; for some men, it’s about looking fashionably unkempt."

*!!!!!**

**Remember when you slammed that door in that guy's face, and he was cool about it and didn't really make a scene because he was being nice to you and it was an accident and probably a one-off thing you weren't going to do ever again????

Yankees fans giving Yankees fans a bad name. Again.

2010-10-27T10:32:00.003-04:00

Not all Yankees fans are the douches seen below, though it's certainly true that each of the douches seen below can be carefully analyzed as perfect case studies in douchebaggetry:

(the best one being the fat dude you looks like a nightmarish parody of the dad from "The Wonder Years" repeatedly saying "fuck you" to Nelson Cruz for daring to have had his play interfered with...)

But there are plenty of reasons that plenty of people think all Yankees fans are just like everybody in the animation above, and among those people is, quite reasonably, Cliff Lee's wife.

Generally speaking, most of society recognizes and adheres to the modern western social ethical standard of the not-spitting-on and not-throwing-beer-on of other human beings. Restrictive? Prudish? Puritanical? Sure, it's all those things. But we implicitly agree to behave this way as a culture in the name of common decency.

So you'd think it would be obvious, this non-spitting-and/or-beer-throwing-on behavior. But not only is it not obvious to a certain cross-section of Yankees fans, it's apparently even more non-obvious that it's a seriously bad idea to choose as your target the wife of the pitcher who absolutely stultified your team's offense and that of every other team who dared challenge him in the post season and, oh yeah, who your team really, really, really wants to sign as a free agent very shortly.

Cliff Lee's wife harassed in NY

Class.

Pandas aren't that cool*

2010-10-21T11:27:00.003-04:00

Or, at the very least, Pandas aren't cool enough to justify the following sentence [a supposedly valid response to the question "Why do you love this bear so much (as to justify spending $5000 to visit it in China)?"] emanating from the mouth of a living, sentient human being:

"You know, when I saw him born (on the Panda-cam) he came out...and he hit a wall! And I thought, 'This panda is going to be somebody incredibly special!'** And he is. He just has this sparkle in his eyes that....mmmm...."

It gets worse, and it's important to remember that this segment, from CBS's "The Early Show", is NOT about mental illness, and that CBS actually treats these women as though they are reasonable, non-threats to society.

Think about that when you skip dinner again because you can't get a job in journalism despite your expensive degree from (name of expensive prestigious school here).

But, hey: Pandas!!! :0)

*Disclaimer: TDH believes Pandas are pretty cool, but that the sheer insanity of these women sort of distorts that fact.
**Because he hit a wall.***

***A wall.

McDonald's might not be that healthy

2010-10-14T13:07:00.003-04:00

Contrary to reason, it turns out mass-produced "food" that comes prepackaged with a full day's supply of ingredients that start with words like "partially" and "processed" and "dehydrated" and the highly suspicious "100%!" and requires the qualifying adjective "Mc" in order to be considered within the realm of non-deceptive business practice ("We never said they were chicken nuggets! They're Chicken McNuggets! Please don't sue us") may not actually be entirely good for you, unless you consider something that bypasses the comfort zone of "non-perishable" and heads straight for "immutable" as a good sign.

In which case, you may want to either take a very basic science class or, at the very least, stop eating altogether.

Carl Paladino is a good (hu)man

2010-10-13T12:36:00.005-04:00

New York Republican gubernatorial candidate and multi-millionaire member of the ruling class Carl Paladino is really mad at those elitist ruling-class types, and he would like to remind you that he's human, and humans, who are not perfect, tend to do imperfect human-like things, such as sending out incredibly racist and/or horse-porn emails to every other imperfect human said human knows and fathering other humans from more than one human while reminding other humans about the importance of family values.

But Carl Paladino also wants you to know that he's not a career politician, and as a not-career politician would never do something as politician-y as pandering to his audience by reading an incredibly homophobic and bigoted statement written for him by a Hasidic rabbi. As an imperfect human, however, he totally, absolutely would! That doesn't make him a hypocrite or a bigot, it just makes him human. Kinda like you!

It also kinda makes him par for the current course:

I like it in the mouth of a knife-wielding stranger in a dark back alley in the middle of the night.

2010-10-09T10:15:00.005-04:00

An astute and loyal TDH reader recently sent us this:

So, here is something that I really hate. I received this email in my inbox yesterday:

"Remember the FB game last year about what color bra you were wearing at the moment? The purpose was to increase awareness of October as Breast Cancer Awareness month. It was a tremendous sucess and had men wondering for days what was with the colors and it made it to the news. This years' game has to do with your purse and where we put our handbag when we get home. For example, 'I like it on the couch', or 'I like it on the kitchen counter'. Just put your answer as your status (with nothing more), then cut and paste this message and forward it to all of your female FB friends. The bra game made it to the news; let's see how powerful we women REALLY are!"

Since when do where we put our purses (coupled with sexual innuendo) raise any sort or awareness for Breast Cancer? Who comes up with this crap?

That's a good observation. We never really thought about it before, but it's true: things that have nothing to do with other things probably don't increase the awareness of the original things. Mind-blowing.

Never ones to waste a good opportunity to take something idiotic and make it dumber, we decided we'd offer some other completely useless and nonsensical suggestions for how to raise awareness of other important and troubling conditions.

Pants for Alzheimer's: Wear pants for one full week. When a stranger addresses you and says "Hey, I notice you're wearing pants!", acknowledge his or her observation. Who knows? Maybe that very same person will go home and research the common and degenerative genetic disease, the cure for which continues to elude researchers.

Donate Your Facebook Status Update for poverty: Much of the world lives in poverty. Too many cannot afford food and shelter, and in many parts of the world access to clean water is scarce. Sadly, the rate of poverty appears to be expanding as the gap between the rich and the poor widens to unprecedented extents. This week, donate your status update to the poor. As large sums of money are needed to properly invest in combating the problem of poverty, try to assign your status update a monetary value, such as 5.6 billion dollars or 153 million dollars.

The Bike Rides for Illiteracy campaign: Even in this industrialized society, with widespread public access to education, the illiteracy rate remains alarmingly high. Why not take a nice bike ride? After all, you could, let's be honest, use the exercise.

Tell a friend about a good book for obesity: Obesity is one of America's most troubling, persistent, and growing epidemics. To help raise awareness of this depressing and endless cycle of obesity, tell a friend about a good book you've recently read (Disclaimer: Actual reading of book is not an essential prerequisite. You've probably heard enough about "Moby Dick" and Dostoevsky at this point to pretty much fake your way through it.)

Lie About Autism day: Autism is a complicated and very difficult to understand behavioral and cognitive disorder that can have crippling consequences for an individual struggling with it, and researchers still know precious little about how to detect, classify, and treat the condition. Why not just make up a bunch of shit about it then, like Jenny McCarthy does? Tell people autism is caused by vaccinations and that they ought to endanger their own children's lives and the lives of those around them by not getting their children vaccinated. Bring a bunch of charts to back up your false and demonstrably untrue claims and print out t-shirts with punchy slogans on them. Point out that 100% of autistic children breathe oxygen in order to sustain their vital organs. Is oxygen to blame? Too early to say. The science isn't in yet. But is that a risk worth taking?

"GLEE > The Beatles!", types man currently forcing blunt instrument through own skull

2010-10-06T16:13:00.003-04:00

Well, the market has spoken, and like most of what comes out of the market's mouth when it speaks, it has dictated a garbled mess of shockingly inane, illogical, offensive bullshit.

And just in time for the 30th anniversary of the last time someone decided murdering John Lennon would be a pretty awesome thing to do.

Per the LA Times:

The 'Glee' cast surpasses Beatles on Billboard Hot 100 chart, inches closer to James Brown and Elvis Presley

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's an overly-stylized, existential, joyless Superman movie!

2010-10-05T13:30:00.005-04:00

The good news: after years of legal limbo, a new "Superman" movie is finally underway.

The bad news: it'll probably have a lot of obvious and mundane philosophical symbolism and annoying slow-motion shots in it.

Christopher Nolan, who managed to suck all the fun and imagination out of Batman in favor of "respectability" (READ: making a middling Scorsese movie, but with costumes), and Zack Snyder (whose artistic philosophy appear to be "style over more style" and who made you pay $12 so he could read you an abridged version of "Watchmen" with a lot of weird slow motion shots) are teaming up with screenwriter David Goyer (who gave the world "Blade: Trinity") to bring the Man of Steel back to the big screen.

Expect a lot of blunt 9/11 references, a comically gruff "Superman voice", and, we're guessing, Superman's "powers" being nothing but a delusion; a result of Superman's insanity, itself a result of the loss of his father, itself a result of, y'know, society or whatever (flying is probably out of the question).

Yeah, this sounds great.

TDH's Religion Survey

2010-09-29T20:00:00.008-04:00

This week, the Pew Research Center revealed the results of a nation-wide survey that gauged what Americans know about their own religions and religion in general. The full report is available here, and the findings are pretty interesting but can be summed up as "not very much". Also, the quiz, which you can take here, was way too easy.

So the expert research team at TDH decided to put together a much harder and far more interesting quiz. How well versed in religion are you? Find out below.

Please select the lettered option that best answers each question

1. Before God hand-picked him to reveal to the world the last testament of the Lord Jesus Christ, Latter-Day Saints founder Joseph Smith was arrested multiple times for being a:

A) Lady killer

B) Super honest person

C) Con Artist

2. “Before fulfilling my destiny as the divinely chosen leader and liberator of my people, I lived in relative isolation, raised by surrogate parents” best describes which of the following religious figures?

A) Jesus

B) Moses

C) Harry Potter

D) Aragorn

E) King Arthur

F) Luke Skywalker

G) Fox Mulder

H) Superman

I) Dexter

J) Justin Bieber

3. Your neighbors wish to build a mosque (or not a mosque but an interfaith community center with a prayer area for Muslims) in your neighborhood. Do you:

A) Invite them to do so, this being a free country that guarantees the freedom to worship and assemble, and, after all, if your religion were the minority, you wouldn’t want your freedom to worship as you chose infringed, would you?

B) A year after they announce their plans to do so, take your considerable influence as an executive at Newscorp and, with the aid of Sarah Palin and other supposed pro-Constitution types, launch a smear campaign against them, alleging, however deceitfully and in spite of all facts to the contrary, ties to terrorist organizations and Hamas, and scare the crap out of everybody else by implying that the mosque will be built right on top of the site of a mass grave and not, as it actually will be, where a mosque already has existed for a number of years?

4. Which of these gods is realest?

A) The god I worship

B) My neighbor's (that guy who is sort of brown and never has any Christmas decorations outside his house) interpretation of that same god

C) Morgan Freeman

D) Allah

E) Percy Jackson

F) Thor

G) The god the gaps

H) Raiden

5. Of the following religions, which have been practiced by a current or former president of the United States?

A) Christianity

6. You suffer from mild depression. How much money would like to donate* to the Church of Scientology so that they may cure you of the Thetans (or dead aliens) that occupy your person and are the cause of said depression?

A) $100

B) $10,000

C) Everything I have. Also, I’m gay and not really okay with that, so if you could cure me of that, too, then gangbusters

7. The Pope is:

A) An agent of the antichrist, as made clear by the “Left Behind” series of novels

B) Kind of a douche/former Nazi

C) German

D) Probably Emperor Palpatine

E) Infallible

8. A person who refuses to actually practice an established religion and instead extracts bit and pieces of various, usually Eastern religions in order to justify his or her recreational drug use and/or validate $200 yoga classes is known as:

A) “New Age”

B) “Spiritual”

C) “A total asshole”

9. Thomas Jefferson was:

A) A complicated public figure, a deist, a slave owner whose considerably progressive philosophy is difficult to reconcile with his unwillingness to abolition the slave trade, and not someone who can easily be shoehorned into any one person’s particular ideology or political agenda

B) A fundamentalist Christian

C) None of the above, and not really all that important a figure in American history, so who cares if he was a fundamentalist Christian or not, since George Washington totally was and we have some made-up documents and out-of-context quotes to prove it

10. Was George Washington really a fundamentalist Christian?

A) No

11. Which of these best sums up the thesis of the Book of Mormon?

A) Women are just the worst. Am I right?

B) Not much good to say about those black folks, either

C) No, but seriously, the women

12. When you watch Japanese animated movies that reference Japanese religious mythology, seriously, do you have any idea what the eff is going on?

A) No

B) Have you seen Cowboy Bebop though? You have to see that. You'd love that.

13) The Bible is the inerrant word of God despite the fact that:

A) The book of Genesis contains two contradictory accounts of creation on the same (first) page

B) Literally thousands of illiterate people have transcribed, edited, and altered, over many, many centuries, major portions of a text that does not and never has had an original, authoritative source by which to measure accuracies

C) It isn't. Also, it was never meant to be

14) Who among the following is not a major credited author of the Christian Bible?

A) John

B) Paul

C) Ringo

D) Scott Stapp

15) PERSONAL ESSAY (OPTIONAL): In 300 or fewer words, explain why your not-for-profit religion, its beliefs, and the events described in its scripture are any less irrational, arbitrary, or totally fantastical than those of Scientology, and why its leaders seem to be very affluent and are constantly asking for your money. (For example: Say your religion describes a plague of frogs or a boat with two of each of literally millions of species and sub-species of animal on it, and your preacher drives a Mercedes)

ANSWERS:
1) C
2) D
3) B
4) C
5) A
6) If you'd like to learn more about Scientology, please see our website or ask for a free stress test from one of our innocuous, friendly members
7) C
8) C
9) C
10) A
11) C
12) A
13) C
14) D
15) Something about some out-of-context quote that your scripture of choice does or doesn't say, which proves that everything you think is correct

HOW TO READ MY RESULTS:

15 Correct: Good job, I guess
0-14 Correct: You're going to hell

*Wink wink

"The Office" without Michael Scott is like...(#1)

2010-09-28T11:44:00.004-04:00

[Steve Carell is leaving The Office at the the end of this season, and NBC plans to continue the series without him. Obviously, this is an awful idea. As such, TDH presents an ongoing series awesomely titled "The Office without Michael Scott is like..."]

#1

INT. A KITCHEN. ANYWHERE. A PERSON AND ANOTHER PERSON ARE STANDING AROUND, EATING CAKE MADE WITH LOTS OF CREAM AND STAWBERRIES.

PERSON
Mmmm...Awesome cake!

ANOTHER PERSON
Thanks! I baked it myself!

P
You are a great baker!

AP
Thanks! I studied for many years in France with (Editor's not: remember to ask an intern who knows stuff about baking and what have you to come up with the name of a famous French pastry chef)

P
All elements of this cake are great when taken together. But you know what the best part is? The delicious cream at the center.

AP
Yes. It does, in fact, make the cake great. I make this cake quite often and its quality remains consistent.

P
This may sound weird, and I'm not entirely sure why I'm saying it at all, but this cake is, in some ways, like a very popular, long-running, well-written sitcom with many individual parts that are very enjoyable, but really held together, in terms of quality and enjoyment, by the central character, which, in this particular metaphor, is like the delicious, delicious cream-filled center.

AP
Yes. That's true. However, I've been thinking about continuing to make this very same cake, but without the cream.

P
Why?

AP
Well, I think people might still enjoy it. And, actually, why even bother continuing to go to all the trouble of making a truly delicious cake when I can save myself a lot of time by just selling people butter, sugar, some flour, a few eggs, and strawberries on their own? Seems like it would be pretty much as good, y'know?

P
Not really. Are you going to replace the cream with anything?

AP
No, I just figured I'd add more flour or something.

P
That sounds really, really stupid and I hate you.

[SCENE]

Nation gets all uptight about two non-controversies, both somehow involving Elmo (Good job, Nation)

2010-09-27T12:15:00.004-04:00

Maybe it's because it was Friday, or maybe it was because the whole country had nothing else to talk about, assuming the massive deficit and the ongoing economic recession and unemployment rate would just work themselves out, but for whatever reason the entire nation decided two stunningly unimportant false controversies deserved the majority of airtime going into last weekend. The takeaway is clear, however: the country is completely out of control, and at the center of that maelstrom is a red muppet.

For the paranoid middle-American overprotective parent was Perrygate, in which noted terribly annoying pop star Katy Perry was booted from Sesame Street due to her deeply offensive segment featuring the little red muppet and possible secret Muslim. The offensive, borderline-pornographic segment in question is available below, but we warn you that, much like the rest of Katy Perry's "work", it is not suitable for any living thing*:

Representatives from Sesame Street laughed off the supposed controversy, but what do you expect from a show catering to the sinister interests of major corporations like The Letter G and The Number 5?

For the rest of us who just hate the idea that someone can be at once smart and funny (I guess) was Colbertgate. Seems a small subsection of the Republican Par ty calling itself "Fox News" got all up in arms (specifically noted genius and first-name-spelling-impaired Megyn Kelly) that one Stephen Colbert had been called to testify before congress on an important issue about which he had done some actual hands-on investigation, and thus was somewhat qualified to speak on said issue. (Anybody who actually watched the thing would know that Colbert actually made some very good points, and even broke character when needed and, shock of shocks, actually managed to coax some coherent and reasonable point out of members of Congress whose party shall remain nameless**- but, c'mon, what's the fun of actually watching something if all it does is force you to have an informed opinion?)

The source of the outrage seems to be that a) it came at the expense of the tax payers (actual bill for taxpayers: very nearly $0, unless you count water) and that b) Stephen Colbert appeared as his popular right-wing pundit character "Stephen Colbert", which of course overlooks the fact that the United States Congress is constantly being addressed by people playing characters with names like "John Boehner", "Steny Hoyer", and "John McCain", the lattermost being one of the most poorly-written, inconsistent characters ever devised, whose motivation and back story appears to change from scene to scene.

But guess which red muppet and probable-sexual-deviant was invited to testify before congress in 2002 (we're guessing "in character") when Republicans controlled both houses?

Keep up the good work, America.

*But it's kinda cute.
**Hint: it sounds like and is spelled exactly the same way as "Republican"

Well played, Joaquin Phoenix. Well played.

2010-09-23T10:27:00.003-04:00

You'll likely recall how last year Joaquin Phoenix appeared to ditch his oppressive existence as successful, respected film actor with the rare luxury of being able to hand-pick whichever roles he chose and was almost never hounded by the press or the paparazzi in favor of that of a drug-addled mental hospital inmate who hallucinated a world in which he appears to think he rents himself out for kids' birthday parties as a rapping Allen Ginsburg impersonator or something like that.

Well, turns out the media and the rest of the world is a bunch of suckers! (But not us, though, which is why you should absolutely, under no circumstances, look here.)

The whole thing was just a sorta brilliant, but really-sorta-even-more-than-that effed-up experiment/performance/mocumentary thing (from the minds of Phoenix and his brother-in-law, Ben Affleck's brother) meant to expose the media's obsession with celebrity and show how gullible everybody (again, except us) is. Or whatever.

Still, in everybody-but-us's defense: The Phoenix clan is pretty messed up, so it seemed reasonable at the time, and this doesn't mean that Joaquin isn't crazy (it sorta confirms it); it just means he isn't the same kind of crazy he wanted all of us, and especially David Letterman, to believe he is.

Anyway, he apologizedish last night:

And in case you've forgotten, here's the infamous reason for Joaquin's act of attrition:

Terrible actress nonetheless possesses savant-like mastery of dramatic irony

2010-09-22T12:19:00.004-04:00

Remember really, really recently when this happened? :

And then remember how all the "entertainment" "journalists" who are on TV way too often and don't really understand how reality works were like "Oh, haha, wonderful! Lindsay Lohan is so over her rampant substance addiction for which he she very, very recently served jail time that now she can look back on it and laugh! How wonderful! Lindsay Lohan is back!"?

So, a week later, here's what happened: Lindsay Lohan - Back To Jail On Friday?

And now, of course, those same people are like "Oh, it's so tragic. I'm really worried about Lindsay Lohan!"

Of course, no one is more concerned about Lindsay Lohan than Lindsay Lohan, who recently said, "I want my career back. I want the respect that I had when I was doing great movies."

We assume she's talking about great movies like Herbie Fully Loaded and Just My Luck and Georgia Rule and I Know Who Killed Me.

Didn't we all go through this same thing with Tara Reid, until Congress passed that resolution or whatever happened that made the whole nation be like "Oh, wait, even though American Pie was a pretty good movie, Tara Raid is a terrible actress. Maybe we should give a shit about what happens to her and on what substances she decides to spend her inexplicably-earned millions of dollars!"?

Mean Girls was a pretty good movie, too, America.

Hint, hint.

Worst thing about the 21st century joins forces with the worst thing about 1996.

2010-09-21T20:04:00.001-04:00

TDH's "Glee" Preview! (It's a "Glee-view"!!!!!)!!!!!!! (!!!!!)

2010-09-21T10:24:00.005-04:00

Well, it's been a long however-long-it's-been*, but the wait is finally over, Gleeks!!!!!! Glee returns tonight. As such, we bring you this exclusive preview of the hit show's 2nd or 3rd or 4th season or whatever one this is!

People watch this. Voluntarily.

Jane Lynch will be in it!!! - Our sources have it on good authority that popular comedic actress Jane Lynch will join the cast of Glee for its whichever-season-this-is season! Astute fans will remember Lynch as the only legitimate reason to have watched any and all prior episodes.
Love is in the air!!! - Our sources tell us that one or more main characters will develop feelings for another main character (hint: it's Kurt), and that their forbidden love will be expressed in musical form!!!!
MUSIC??? - That's right, Gleeks: get ready, 'cause our sources tell us that this season, teenage angst will be expressed through the always entertaining form of badly-arranged, unnecessarily jazzed-up covers of outdated pop songs, poorly lip-synched by the cast. You heard it here first.
Does that mean Trevor will finally get over his stutter and work up enough courage to ask out Rachel by serenading her with a heart-melting rendition of "Every Rose Has Its Thorn"???? - Are those really characters? I mean, yeah, that sounds like something that'll probably happen.
Is the long-rumored Friday Night Lights crossover episode really happening??? - No, but that would be awesome.
Will a certain "Material Girl" be dropping by Gleetown to visit the students of Glee High? - Yep! Our sources have it on good authority that none other than Madge herself will guest-star as a recruiter from Julliard who takes a liking to Kurt!!! Will she convince Kurt to graduate early and leave his Glee-mates behind so that he may join the prestigious Julliard Glee Club?? Only a stirring rendition of Brandy and Monica's "The Boy is Mine" knows!**
OMG IS THERE GOING TO BE LADY GAGA SONGS???? - Uh...yeah. I...Yeah, there is...
So, assuming I'm heterosexual, what's in it for me???? - Um, you're not. I mean...you're not, right?
GLEE!!!

*A month? Three months? 8 minutes?
**Kurt is the only character's name we know off the top of our heads***, and we totally made this whole thing up.

***Three guesses as to why.

Christine O'Donnell might not be 100% non-crazy

2010-09-20T10:15:00.004-04:00

If you've been watching/listening to/reading the anything, then you probably know some of the following things Christine O'Donnell believes:
-condoms cause AIDS
-evolution is bullshit
-creationism is totally logical
-masturbation counts as cheating...on God!!
-a true feminist stays home and submits to her husband and cooks and has babies (rule not applicable to Christine O'Donnell, somehow, apparently)
-don't even get me started on those gays... (who can be cured, bee tee dubs!)

Yawn. BORRRRRR-RINNNNNGG. Please. It's been done a million times. "The 700 Club" is on TV all the time. You don't have to go far to hear this shit. That doesn't make Christine O'Donnell crazy. It just makes her willing to say a lot of really fucked up, demonstrably untrue shit fed to her by a fascist fringe right-wing group masquerading as Christians.

That, however, she thinks one of society's most pressing and imminent problems is witches (WITCHES!!!*) does (she should know; she one time totally almost...witched...or whatever.)

And as this clip from Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" shows, it also makes her a really, really big liar.

Look, I'm not saying nobody has ever had a first date that occurred on a Satanic altar. Of course, that happens all the time. What I am saying, though, is that nobody has ever had a first date that occurred on a Satanic altar and that Christine O'Donnell is batshit crazy.

*WITCHES!!!!!!

MTV still gives out awards, I guess

2010-09-14T11:13:00.006-04:00

And not just the "Best Explosion" or "Biggest OMG Moment in a 'Twilight' Movie" kind. Accidental hour-long run-ins with entertainment news shows have led the editors of this blog to the inevitable conclusion that MTV's Video Music Awards are still happening and, moreover, apparently took place this past weekend, despite the fact that most current MTV viewers don't remember the days when bands actually made great music videos (ask a 15-year-old to define "Jamiroquai" or "R.E.M." or "Peter Gabriel") or, more importantly, the days when MTV showed an interest in things like "bands" and "videos".

And, yet, in all this coverage of the VMAs*, no actual evidence that anyone won anything. There was a "brilliant" "comeback" "surprise" performance from Lindsay Lohan, in which she hilariously sent-up her own alcoholism by lecturing actual alcoholic and VMA host Chelsea Handler about alcohol (get it??); a broad, staged commentary on the thing with Taylor Swift and Kanye West which was the only thing anybody talked about the last time the VMAs happened; Cher showed up on stage, and everybody talked about how great she looked and how she's over 60 and wondered how someone over 60 can look that great, completely overlooking the fact that Cher has an enormous amount of money and that there's such a thing as plastic surgery; and Lady Gaga wore meat (again).

But nobody seems to have won any awards. Well, Lady Gaga apparently did, but we're not sure they were actual awards so much as just someone at a podium saying "Best" followed by some kind of combination of one or more nouns and adjectives and then saying "Lady Gaga". Also Lady Gaga cried and said something about not disappointing her fans by losing. Because the emotional well-being of Lady Gaga fans, as we all know, depends solely on the number of irrelevant awards Lady Gaga wins. Which might sound insane, but that's until you remember that these are people who think the most brilliant and awesome and talented person in the world is someone who wears Kermits. And meat.

Shut up, lady.

*not a disease, somehow

Stupid people: "Science is jerks!" :(

2010-09-10T15:29:00.005-04:00

Let's run a little thought experiment. Suppose I showed up at your house with brownies. Pretty good, right? I mean, brownies! Who doesn't like that?

Now, let's say you asked me, "Hey (my name), these are great brownies! Yum! Surely your mom must have baked them from a very good recipe and recently. Tell me, good sir, from whence did these brownies originate?" (Note: you enjoy speaking in Shakespearey ways when asking brownie-based questions, because you're, let's face it, a little pretentious)

Let's say I responded, "Nope. Got 'em at the store. Pretty good right?"

Okay, now which of these do you think would be a reasonable response to this?

a) "Oh, well...still, good brownies! And, y'know, I ended up getting brownies in the end, so who am I to complain about from whence they came? I'm a very, very lucky person to have been bestowed with these marvelous brownies and should just enjoy them while they last."

b) "Wait, so you're trying to tell me your mom DOESN'T EXIST?????????????????????? How DARE YOU assault my deeply-held personal beliefs regarding these brownies and their origins???????????????????????????????? Who do you think you are????!??!?!?! You stupid...Taliban...guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

If you said "b", you'd probably get along with people like probable-supervillian The Baroness Greenfield.

Seems Stephen Hawking -also known as the smartest person ever - has once again upset people who don't like logic and facts. You'll recall his most recent crime against people who want things their own way in spite of facts when a conservative columnist tried to illustrate the evils of socialized medicine by claiming that brilliant men with severe medical impairments, such as one "Stephen Hawking", would never even be given a chance under evil systems such as the one that exists in Great Britain, prompting one Stephen Hawking to point out the awkward fact that he is British and that his life was saved by, and continues to be sustained by, British doctors in the evil British socialized healthcare system. That jerk.

But now Hawking has apparently gone too far. Turns out that no higher authority than Pope John Paul II had once told Hawking that it was all well and good to study the cosmos but that he and all the other sciencey types should avoid studying so much that he finds out how the universe was created and that that was God's doing so we don't need to find out how it happened because God did it and it was God and we already know that so there's no need to find out. Because we know. Kay?

And what does Stephen Hawking do? The very same thing that Galileo and Copernicus and other assholes with their facts and numbers and elite-y things did: destroyed religion entirely for everybody ever forever.

Hawking's latest book, "The Grand Design", dares to point out that it is not necessary to invoke any kind of god for creation to take place* which, if you read the previous sentence right, is the exact same thing as saying that there is absolutely no God, that you're stupid for believing there is a God, and that your religion sucks and is worthless, and that Stephen Hawking knows everything so you can just go to hell, which doesn't exist.

At least, that's how Baroness von Greenenshtein (or whatever) decided to take it, as did any number of high and low-profile people all over the internets.

Stupid science.

*Which is sort of basically what every scientist and philosopher ever has been saying for centuries

Video games have actually changed slightly since, oh, the late 1970s

2010-09-03T11:57:00.005-04:00

We appreciate when daytime TV lawfirms think outside the box. No one ever again needs to see a commercial with a guy in a cowboy hat standing in front of a terribly obvious bluescreen recreation of downtown Manhattan or fat men who look like they couldn't make it in the used car sales business wearing bad suits and explaining how they are only there to help you get what you deserve ever, ever again; which in no way stops said people from making said commercial over and over again.

So it's nice to see things like this every now and again:

It's different. It borders on clever. It also assumes that video games have essentially remained unchanged since the 65-year-old ad executive who greenlit this thing once briefly watched that one guy play Space Invaders after his bowling team's Friday night meet in 1978.

For whatever reason, advertisers and television producers can't seem to understand that video games no longer yield random bleeping and blooping sounds emanating from the television and no longer involve randomly mashing buttons as quickly as possible to achieve a high score.

And the last time I or anyone else played a game in which the number of "lives" a person had was relative to his or her success, games were stored on huge chunks of plastic that required an ordinate and illogical amount of human-generated spit and carbon dioxide in order to function properly. Also, sometime in the last decade or so video game consoles started using newfangled whatsits called "hard drives", meaning that regardless of whether the power was on or off, chances are a person could pick up immediately (or very closely) to where he or she left off.

In other words, this is a great commercial in 1992.

Still, it makes us nostalgic for the days of lives and high scores, but had this commercial actually appeared in those days, we'd probably have criticized it for focusing on the wrong problem. Instead of suing the power company, why not sue the game developers for creating a totally awesome game that, apparently, is not supposed to be played beyond the fourth of fifth level, which is impossible to beat. In other words, this would have been a great commercial in 1992 if it had been about the pain and suffering caused by the makers of Battletoads:

ABC still unclear on meaning of word "star"

2010-09-01T10:25:00.004-04:00

ABC unveiled the cast of the upcoming season of "Dancing with the Stars" and you can finally breathe easy knowing that the good people there have held true to their brave and unfailing refusal to not actually cast any actual stars on the show.

Never forgive! Never forget!

The new cast:

- Abstinence enthusiast/non-practitioner and noted non-star Bristol Palin
- "Jersey Shore" appearer-on and real-name deficiency sufferer The Situation
- Former C-list actor and current A-list icon of C-list nostalgia David Hasselhoff
- Former basketball almost-star and current boyfriend of sorta-famous Eliza Dushku, Rick Fox
- Florence Henderson, who would totally count as a star in the upcoming season of "Dancing with the Stars" if the upcoming year were 1971
- Michael Bolton, see above, change 1971 to 1991
- Brandy Norwood, see above, change 1991 to 2001, pretend UPN still exists and that Brandy hadn't killed someone
- Audrina Partridge, who we honestly aren't even totally sure is, probably because she's on "The Hills"
- Margaret Cho, who, we're going to admit, is totally not a star but, even though we don't care about this show whatsoever, kinda makes at least the 5 minutes of the one episode she'll be in before elimination kind of worth watching
- Kyle Massey, which is a name and a person we're pretty sure ABC just made up because it couldn't find enough real non-stars
- Jennifer Grey, who was in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Dirty Dancing". 25 years ago.

Jennifer Grey might be the only inspired choice, since it's pretty clear that she was able to dance pretty well, and dirtily, 25 years ago so, who knows? Maybe she will be able to again! Also, remember how Patrick Swayze is recently dead? Pretty sure that's just a coincidence (but it isn't).

The 1st Amendment is probably first for a reason, maybe.

2010-08-24T14:23:00.007-04:00

And maybe people who want to serve half terms as elected officials should read the actual text of said amendment, maybe.

Look, we already went over this with Carrie Prejean, but Carrie Prejean was just a stupid beauty contest contestant. We don't actually hold stupid beauty contest contestants up to a standard higher than being beautiful and stupid.

We'll even give bigoted former radio talk-show hosts the benefit of assuming bigoted former talk-show hosts are bigoted and former talk-show hosts, and thus shouldn't be expected to be all up with the United States Constitution.

Part-time governors and former vice presidential candidates, however, should maybe know what the First Amendment actually (unambiguously) says. For the benefit of said former sorta-governors and those like him/her, we'll translate into text that may be easier to understand.

First, here's a the text of a complaint filed via Twitter on behalf of a bigoted talk-show host (who "left her job voluntarily" after repeatedly using a racial epithet on the air, upsetting a lot of corporate sponsors who don't necessarily want their images tied to a bigoted talk-show host who uses racial epithets on the air repeatedly) by a Christian Fundamentalist and Twitter enthusiast who once quit her job as governor to make more money:

Dr.Laura (Or not Dr. Laura. No one said we were specifically talking about Dr. Laura. -Ed.) :don't retreat...reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't American,not fair")

Okay, person who shall remain nameless*, here's our translation:

Cngrss shall make no law rspctng an establishment of rlgn...or prhbting the free x-r-cise thereof...or abrdgng the frdom of speech...or of the press...or the right of the ppl p-cably 2 assmbl...'n 2 ptition the Gvmt 4 a redress of grievncs.

Get it now?

Not sure if you noticed, but in the hypothetical case as described above, Congress made no law stopping former talk-show hosts from expressing her or his bigoted opinions, nor did they do anything that prevents her or him from going wherever she or he wants (we suggest the parts of Washington DC that the Tea Party thinks its members shouldn't go to, as a start) and uttering racial epithets as often and as loudly as she or he wants, just as the 1st Amendment guaranteed. The bigoted former talk-show host's 1st Amendment rights are alive and well and perfectly intact, as are those of her sponsors, who decided to express their opinions by deciding not to give her any money anymore, as are those of her former employers, who decided to express their opinions by not employing her any longer.

And all that without Congress doing anything at all! Magic.

Also, this amendment means that Muslims have every right to build a community center at the former Burlington Coat Factory in downtown Manhattan, just as former sorta-governors have every right to scare white people and reveal his or her intolerance by calling it the "Ground Zero Mosque", despite it not being at Ground Zero and it not being a mosque. Isn't America great?

*It's Sarah Palin.

Wearing a t-shirt that expresses your irrelevant opinions about popular culture does not make you a member of any team/teams.

2010-08-24T14:01:00.006-04:00

Here are some examples of teams:
The Justice League of America
The Milwaukee Brewers
~~The New Jersey Nets~~
The Croatian Olympic Gymnastics Team

Here are some examples of non-teams:
Team Jennifer/Team Angelina
Team Edward/Team Jacob
Team Jack/Team Sawyer

Did you spot the difference? In the case of actual teams, actual members of said teams have actual impact of the outcomes of said teams' exploits. Also, in the case of actual teams, the successes and set-backs said teams experience have actual consequences for the actual members of the actual teams.

In fake non-teams, people wear t-shirts expressing their preference for one of two or more possibly fictional individuals, over whose lives the t-shirt wearers have absolutely no impact whatsoever. Often, these people are richer than the t-shirt wearer will ever be, which doesn't stop them from spending a fraction, however small, of what limited money they currently possess on a stupid t-shirt expressing their solidarity with someone who either doesn't give a shit about their existence or isn't real.

Also, sorry Team Jacob, but Bella ends up with Edward. Oh and, also, she becomes a vampire. (<---Spoiler Alert!) In other words, you are a team of losers. Take that as literally or figuratively as you'd like. *The Daily Hated stands by its implied contention that the Justice League of America is real.

Tapes. Yep: Tapes.

2010-08-17T12:13:00.004-04:00

You'll recall that, some years ago, the hipsteratti made it its own personal crusade to present the delusional, scientifically inaccurate case that vinyl records (or, simply, if you were cool, "vinyl") were superior in every conceivable way to CDs, despite the fact that the actual audio fidelity and structural durability of said "vinyl" was and remains in no way superior to CDs. This all centered around an amorphous and vague argument concerning the sound's "warmth".

Of course, the only real advantage to vynil is that music sounds different on vynil, and that a lot of bands recorded their albums with the intention of said albums being heard on vynil, and thus vynil, while a pain in the ass, is actually more "authentic". This was due in no small part to the fact that said bands were recording and distributing music in the mid 1970s.

What made that forced, manufactured non-debate at least tolerable was the fact that at least we could all agree on one point: cassette tapes suck.

Cassette tapes: those flimsy, crunchy slabs of plastic that were nearly impossible to distinguish between and that invariably ended up being crunched or melted on the backseat of your Toyota Corolla if they lasted long enough to not be chewed, stretched, and mangled to death by your walkman, which they never did. They always sucked, they always will suck, and no one will ever be stupid enough to suggest that they do anything other than suck.

Until, of course, now.

What you're about to hear, if you so dare, is an actual argument made by actual people of the superiority of the cassette tape. Not surprisingly, the term "warmth" is cited on more than one occasion.

Soundcheck: Cassette Reset

Related: The Daily Hated #30: People who condescendingly refer to bands only they have heard of, July 17, 2008

Here's To A Peeance, Freeance Iraq!

2010-08-11T11:08:00.003-04:00

In light of President Obama's announcement last week that the Iraq War/Invasion/Prolonged Blood-Soaked Practical Joke-Thing is finally all but over, we thought now was a good time to think back fondly on some of our favorite moments from the tragicomic performance art troupe that ran the country for 8 years, colloquially known as the Bush Administration.

There's an abundant, delicious menu from which to choose (Draft-dodging president becomes first president to disgrace civilian post by donning military garb and declaring "Mission Accomplished" many, many years before war was over! Same president inviting insurgents who are killing our troops by the thousands to "bring it on!"), but none are quite as satisfying as President Bush laying out his vision for a "peeance, freeance" Iraq, beautifully immortalized by the George W. Bush Singers in the video below.

TDH Presents "Traditional Marriage and Proposition 8: A Fable"

2010-08-09T12:00:00.003-04:00

Two intellectual powerhouses go head-to-head in a reasonable debate over California's Proposition 8 and the traditional definition of marriage!

Diaper Wars: Huggies fires the devastating pedophilia missile.

2010-08-03T12:24:00.006-04:00

Take that, Pampers/any and all standards of basic human decency!

There's apparently a war raging in America right now over diapers. You'll be forgiven for not keeping up with current events enough to know that many brave men and women have bravely given their brave lives to protect the right of every American to have the very best diaper for their non-self-aware babies to don during a period of their lives of which they will have absolutely no memory when they reach such an age as to no longer be wearing diapers. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted.

Still, ABC news last week did their due diligence to make you and your family aware of the important struggle between Pampers and Huggies for total diaper supremacy. After all, there's nothing more American than picking which of two enormous corporations should make slightly more untold billions of dollars than they other. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted.

And now, Huggies has upped the ante by going for the jugular and hitting Pampers with a shock-and-awe, take-no-prisoners strategy: aggresive, unrepentant, deeply disturbing pedophilia. Hey, sex sells, and there's no reason why babies shouldn't be sexualized in the name of the almighty dollar. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted.

Here is Huggies' "OMG I Would So Hit That Baby" ad campaign:

David Cross on the Health Care Yellings

2010-07-29T15:09:00.004-04:00

Few moments in western history are prouder than the summer of 2009, when people from all across this great land banded together to proclaim that any and all efforts to provide people with access to health care was somehow the equivalent of German National Socialism.

It took a great deal of creativity and imagination to pull that one off, and buried in the shear shock and awe of such an argument were so many other great proclamations of a truly staggering, jaw-dropping creative idiocy. Like, for instance, the fact that a bunch of ill-informed, angry people shouting out made-up facts and statistics and fighting passionately against their own self interest could be described as a "debate".

Or the suggestion that President Obama secretly wants your grandmother dead, that a public option would be a first step toward Stalinism, and the unforgettable suggestion of Tom Coburn that someone's cancer radiation therapy should be payed for by his neighbors and the Republican party which, in case you weren't paying attention, is the most radical model of socialized medicine ever put forth by any human being ever.

David Cross fondly recalls that proud time in history, lo these long 12 months ago:

Words and Phrases We Hope Die Soon: Volume 1

2010-07-27T16:43:00.004-04:00

Icing (noun? verb? who cares?) - As best we can tell, this involves giving someone an unpopular alcoholic beverage and then forcing them to drink it. Not so drinking said beverage reflects negatively upon the person who has been iced's manliness or something. This is less an annoying word (it is, for instance, perfectly benign in hockey) than it is an utterly staggering example of human worthlessness. We suggest replacing it with One Hundred Dollar Billing. We would, in that case, be willing to demonstrate our manliness at any time

Manniversary (noun; crime against language) - There are two key points to make on the existence of this word, and neither of them justify its existence. Point one, it could refer to the wedding anniversary of two gay men, who, in all likelihood, having come out of the closet (having gotten married and all) and have thus become secure in their sexuality, would probably refer it as an "anniversary". Point two, it could refer to the day two hetero BFFs started their bromance, and, if this occasion is actually brought up, in the first place...well, probably best to just refer to point one.

Bromance (noun) - See above.

Epic (noun; adjective; public nuisance) - Unacceptable in all instances except when referring to either actual epics or things of actual epic proportions. For instance "Wow, the 9-hour director's cut of Gladiator is an epic of epic proportions" is acceptable. "OMG, I totally just went on this epic date with my epic crush on whom I have an epic obsession and it was epic" is not.

Sexting ("verb") - A double offender: first in that it's awkward to say, and if you're going to make up fake words, they should at least be catchy and easy to say, and second in that old people who are out of touch, live in the suburbs, are afraid of technology, and have nothing better to be concerned about (and their leader, Dr. Phil) are the only people who say it, and they say it constantly (and, as previously stated, awkwardly).

Price Point (noun noun) - You mean a price?

Fail (noun, somehow) - It's not 2008 anymore

Most Succesful Gay Porn of All Time to Get Sequel, For Some Reason

2010-07-22T16:03:00.005-04:00

300, the megahit feature-length epic gay porn Playstation 1 cutscene, is getting a sequel!

In case you've been fortunate enough to forget, the original 300 was a terrible and needless adaptation of an ultraviolent, historically questionable, thrilling graphic novel by acclaimed writer Frank Miller, which, like most of Miller's work, used the comic book format beautifully and in a way that, by it's nature, would never work as a live-action film.

300 is also responsible for kick-starting the hideous, grating career of terrible actor and former Jennifer Aniston attachment Gerard Butler, who had at the time only appeared in unsuccessful awful movie.

And now, since Miller is writing a follow up titled Xerxes, terrible director Zack Snyder, who recently charged you 12 bucks so that he could basically read a slightly-abridged version of Watchmen to you in a movie theater, has announced he has entered into negotiations to ruin the new material on the big screen!

Aint it Cool News has all the terribly dissapointing details.

Apparently Famous Person of the Moment: Selena Gomez

2010-07-22T15:23:00.004-04:00

If you've turned on your television recently, there's a good chance you've come across Selena Gomez, the latest in an endless string of young people who everybody seems to be going out of their way to inform you is famous.

Gomez, who is possibly a former contestant on nation-wide singing contest or the former star of an ABC Family, Disney Channel, or Nickelodeon sitcom, or perhaps even a YouTube sensation harvested by Usher as the next fleeting tween pop star, is all the rage right now.

She'll next be starring as the Latino daughter of potentially the whitest human being on Earth, John Corbett, in the adaptation of Beverly Cleary's classic "Ramona" series of children's novels, which, you're now being expected to revise in your memory, centers around the exploits of typical, generic white American family and the relationship between the mischevious, precosious, extraordinarily white youngest daughter, Ramona, and her Latino adopted big sister, Beezus.

Report: Vienna accuses Jake of being blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

2010-07-21T13:46:00.005-04:00

Above: Jake and Vienna or something, probably.

According to the latest shocking reports, former "Bachelor" Jake Svelka or whatever and Vienhojphefpoivn nnnnvwonbkjdslhvidvnoivfrbvgowrbnglobnsw;oirwod;norbrobdsnjkbcvweriblvuwrelk ndjsLB vl bjhb wrlibj vlibju wlibd vkbjwlfeblNBJ VFDC VBD;KVBUUB W;OsBvOIEVB;OWDibvn j;LSKVBO;WIebvfg r,ibw;vo;wREIVBN WR;Oivbds LKEBjw vwr;OIVBo;Wr vdo;ibew O;V

Sorry, fell asleep on the keyboajdpowiahoipndvi;wvbgo;rdv;ojnbfrdinbv ;sovinbjw; vs

Radar Online might as well change its name to melgibsonisapsycopath.com

2010-07-21T13:28:00.005-04:00

The latest from the official site for your daily dose of alleged-Mel Gibson verbal/physical abuse-related news and alleged-Mel Gibson-is-crazy analysis from Gibson/crazy person experts (complete with a somewhat hilariously alleged-Mel Gibson-centric text crawl) has a disturbing picture of a pixelated baby and a new tape with alleged-Gibson saying that even if his ex-girlfriend comes forward with the tapes, no one's going to believe it's her. After all, who would believe that a violence-obsessed devout anti-Semite with a raging addiction to alcohol would say/do anything negative? Crazy talk.

Also, if you scroll down far enough, you'll find boring stories about marginally-human entities like Jennifer Aniston, Lindsay Lohan, and Kim Kardashian, proving Radar Online is totally prestigious and journalism-y.

We Love Losers: Alabama Gubernatorial Race Edition

2010-07-21T08:55:00.006-04:00

The great thing about losers is that they tend to do some pretty hysterical, mocking-worthy things on the road to losing.

Such is the case of one Tim James, the explicitly racist and hilariously xenophobic former candidate for governor of Alabama, whose commercial touting his questionable logic and dramatic timing became an internet cult sensation.

Aside from the obviously open-to-debate suggestion that whatever language is spoken in Alabama qualifies under any reasonable person's standards as "English" and not-open-to-debate implication that English, which isn't America's official language, is America's official language, it's the manufactured, brazenly transparent forced-foksiness of "(beat)...does it ta yew?" that made Tim James' campaign ad (if not his campaign) a timeless keeper.

And because the universe is a wonderful place of providence*, said ad is also fully responsible for this work of unassailable genius:

"Maybe it's the businessman in me that wants to draw a picture of a pie with the word 'math' inside instead of using the symbol for pi drawn by a mathematician, but it just makes sense" is, to date, the greatest single sentence ever uttered by a human being.

*In the rare instances when it's not a total cesspool of grating meaninglessness, we mean.

English people named Tony need to shut up...

2010-07-15T13:44:00.005-04:00

...especially when they are/would logically be played by Michael Sheen in the movie version.

Not long after Tony "I want my life back" Heyward ruined America, put countless people out of work for what is sure to be a very long time, and killed a whole bunch of animals explained that nobody wants the Gulf Coast crisis to be over more than he does (except for all the above mentioned, of course, who can't just retire to their yachts), Tony "Nothing's my fault/Yay, torture!" Blair decided to come out and explain just how his successor (whose career was ruined by Blair, much like the rest of Britain/major parts of the Middle East/any and all sense of idealism among the British electorate for what is sure to be a very long time, and who was burdened with trying to save his political party from the catastrophic depths of the massive ditch he buried it in) is a terrible, terrible person.

Rule of thumb for the rest of the world: not all British people are evil. Just the ones named Tony who look like Michael Sheen. Don't trust them. Or the Welsh.

Sarah Palin Logic: Racism Edition

2010-07-15T09:54:00.003-04:00

'I am saddened by the NAACP’s claim that patriotic Americans who stand up for the United States of America’s Constitutional rights are somehow “racists.” The charge that Tea Party Americans judge people by the color of their skin is false, appalling, and is a regressive and diversionary tactic to change the subject at hand.'

Of course, that wasn't the NAACP's charge. Rather, they passed a resolution to suggest that the Tea Party should strive for inclusiveness and condemn racism among certain member of its club. Or, to use their words, "We felt the time had come to stand up and say, 'It's time for the Tea Party to be responsible members of this democracy and make sure they don't tolerate bigots or bigotry among their members. We don't have a problem with the Tea Party's existence. We have an issue with their acceptance and welcoming of white supremacists into their organizations.'" (Slander!)

And, of course, that's the right way to say it, because most Tea Party types probably aren't racist, just like how most liberals don't support Castro, or how most members of the NAACP don't support Louis Farrakhan's anti-semitism (which doesn't stop right-wingers from demanding that those very groups distance themselves from those particular figures and condemn their beliefs).

But they might have been referring to, y'know, this kind of thing (with apologies to those easily offended by the abusive treatment of the English language).

Or, say, the remarks of one Tea Party activist and radio host Mark Williams, who said this of the president: "Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. is an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief." Not to mention his non-racist description of Allah (which is simply a different name for the same God that Christians supposedly believe in) as the "terrorists' monkey-god" (to be fair, he later apologized: "In the course of the article I described the 'god' worshiped by terrorists as 'a monkey god.' I was wrong and that was offensive. I owe an apology to millions of Hindus who worship Lord Hanuman, an actual Monkey God... Hanuman is worshiped as a symbol of perseverance, strength and devotion. He is known as a destroyer of evil and to inspire and liberate. Those are hardly the traits of whatever the Hell (literally) it is that terrorists worship and worthy of my respect and admiration not ridicule.")

Or those of former presidential candidate and Tea Party convention key note speaker Tom Tancredo, who, at said convention, claimed “people who could not even spell the word or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House.”

But apparently the NAACP doesn't have the right to speak out against that kind of thing (and, it should be noted, just that kind of thing, and not, say, the total dissolution of the Tea Party, who they did not call outright racist at all).

If only the Bible included a bit about how we have to get all black people into executive office suites, academia, and high-ranking elected positions or else Jesus won't come back and the apocalypse won't happen. I'll bet then Sarah'd find the concerns of the NAACP unimpeachable. Just a guess.

Some things deserve actual words. Eulogies are among them.

2010-07-13T15:52:00.004-04:00

Abbrvtng wrds can b fun + dsnt take as lng.

OMG Grg Stnbrnnr died!?!1? RIP, Grg. U left us 2 early. Lol.

Which is fine when you're telling your friend you're running ten minutes late, or when you're just trying to tell your Twitter followers that the JonasBros. shw was AWSM OMG!!!!!, or when you're Sarah Palin and can't be expected to string together full words anyway, any more than you can be expected to string together, say, full elected terms.

But when ppl die, especially when it's, say, you're ex-girlfriend, maybe their final passing should be given a little more than, say, this, Ashton Kutcher:
"2day the world lost a little piece of sunshine. My deepest condolences go out 2 Brittany's family, her husband, & her amazing mother Sharon."

Or maybe it should be said that a website that essentially demands abbreviations isn't ideally suited for eulogizing loved ones/complete strangers. But do us a solid and, at the very least, ditch "RIP". It's creepy, trite, and, even if it weren't, actually typing "rest in peace" takes very, very little time.

Mel Gibson cares about traditional family values

2010-07-12T18:14:00.004-04:00

Eight or nine children, a handful of slaves, and a wife (or two, or a mistress, or whatever) who is your legal property and who must be punished, physically if necessary, if, y'know, that's what she has coming to her. Aside from being legally(ish) blocked from taking the second too literally, Mel Gibson (at left, the one who looks literally like an evil muppet) takes the traditional Biblical definition of family quite literally.

Which is what you'd expect from a guy with so many totally mainstream Biblical views that he thinks the Roman Catholic Church is too liberal and that the Gospels should be read as the origin of the torture porn genre (replacing the sadistic surgeon with Jews).

Anyway, Radar Online released a bunch more "alleged" tapes of either Mel Gibson going apeshit and spewing every offensive word he can think of, or someone who sounds exactly like and probably is Mel Gibson going apeshit and spewing every offensive word he can think of (he maybe called his Dad between messages to get ideas for new epithets) and oscillating between basically threatening to kill his girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva and actually threatening to kill his girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva. It's what Jesus would have wanted.

Either way, this is the best thing to happen to Christian Bale in a long time.

Now all the fun is trying to guess which ethnic group Mel is going to cite in his next hateful anger-spree. I'll bet it's ~~those fucking icemunchers~~ Eskimos.

File under "Terrible Stuff ESPN Does"

2010-07-12T13:52:00.003-04:00

I thought one of the key benefits of living in a democratic republic was that we didn't have to devote a whole chunk of prime-time broadcasting to the whims of a rich guy who arbitrarily declares himself "king", just so we can witness his devoted subjects facilitate his boring, self-indulgent proclamations outlining how he plans on becoming richer than he already is, at the expense of those who brought him to power in the first place, who understandably revolt in futile protest.

How about we get on that one, Tea Party people?

To ESPN's credit, not only did they manage to put together the worst "television special" of all time, but somehow managed to pull of the worst-possible "television special" that could ever been devised. There's an argument to be made that poker should be shown on a sports network*. Much harder to make is an argument that a special about one specific fact about one specific person who happens to play one specific sport, during such a time said specific sport isn't played, all presented with the production values of that weird show about ham radios or Korean music videos or whatever that surely runs on your local cable access channel, deserves to be on a sports network.

*there's not, really

A notice about the new TDH

2010-07-12T11:24:00.006-04:00

Things change. That's life. We figured we'd change, too.

So the first thing you'll probably notice is the new look, which you love, so don't bother with the feedback. We know. You're welcome.

We'd like to thank our friend Nick Hughes (who happens to be the drummer in this totally awesome band) for designing the new title header and inspiring our new revamp.

But the big news is that TDH is really and truly evolving. Don't worry: the quality of writing and in-depth analysis you've come to expect from us will remain peerless and superb, but since it's impossible to improve upon perfection, it won't get any better, either.

However, we've come to the conclusion that we've exhausted the possibilities of the list-based format you've come to love, admire, and cherish. As we've gotten older and somehow wiser, the things we've come to despise have become much more difficult to point to directly. We've developed a more mature and complex understanding of the world and how to despise just about everything about it, and we came to realize the site should reflect that.

Of course, we will leave all previous posts up and as-is, for those of you who find yourselves confused, lost, and frightened by change and the unfamiliar.

We know how much we mean to you, and how grateful you are for all we do, and we know that if you could shout your appreciation into the internet so that we (and everybody else) could hear it, you would do that. So let us take this opportunity to say, for you, "thank you", to us, for everything we do for you.

You're welcome.

-TDH

28) FIFA

2010-06-28T13:11:00.005-04:00

Some people think soccer's boring. These people, of course, are wrong. But a more intelligent and smaller group of people think international soccer is marred by the arrogance, incompetence, and stubbornness of its governing body. These people are much less wrong.

If you want more people (by which I mean Americans) to take the sport seriously, you might want to start by taking the sport seriously. Like say, for instance, using technology used by just about every other established sport (high-tech stuff, too, like video monitors), or allowing interruptions to a frequently-interrupted game to be sure that you're getting things right (abandoning the currently cherished "the decision of the officials on the field trump physics, logic, and facts" standard), and being able to explain why this...

...doesn't count as a goal.

FIFA, meanwhile, seems to the think the problem is with the fans who want the rules to be adhered to. Luckily, those tiny idiots won't be a problem anymore.

27) Babies: The Movie

2010-05-03T10:47:00.004-04:00

Here's what the movie "Babies" is about: Babies. "Babies" follows four (human) babies from infancy to slightly later in infancy. What exciting twists and turns will their lives take as they go from not knowing how to do anything to not knowing how to do anything while being slightly larger than they were before?!

Ever wonder how babies in America are different from babies in Mongolia? Well, for 12 bucks, now you can find out that they aren't! Babies!

I'll bet a bunch of them cry!

Celebrate our overly-valued obsession with human fertility as though it were, in itself, some kind of virtue as you are continually encouraged to ignore the fact of all the untold millions of already-alive people with no access to running water, food, or medical care of any kind! Babies!

Babies!

26) Sandra Bullock's (________)

2010-04-29T15:26:00.004-04:00

Sandra Bullock seems like a delightful girl and pretty nice person. We all loved her in that delightful movie she was in, when she was all quirky and delightful and America's sweetheart-y.

Actually, the look on that baby's face is about right.
Congratulations, New York Post: so transparently
worthless and deplorable, even infants get it.

None of the above, however, in any way means that any person besides Sandra Bullock, her immediate family, and whichever specific person is involved in each specific instance should in any way be concerned with what's going on in Sandra Bullock's life. You hear me, current cover of the supposed "news" paper The New York Post? I know you're not a real newspaper and all, but there's still plenty of real news for you to sensationalize a basically lie about, like this enormous and catastrophic oil spill, or, I dunno, Afghanistan (just throwing things out there off the top of my head), or, let's just say, absolutely anything besides the fact that Sandra Bullock adopted a fucking baby and all is well with her now so all should be well with everyone else, too.

25) Patchouli

2010-04-27T13:31:00.003-04:00

Because actually saying to everybody you run into "I have broad, vaguely-defined beliefs concerning peace, love, and justice, which I plan to address by smoking a lot of marijuana and dancing around barefoot in the rain in the middle of town, and also really shitty taste in music" takes way more time than just walking around smelling like dirt.

24) Lady Gaga

2010-04-14T14:27:00.002-04:00

Wait, sorry, were you waiting for something? Did this really need words?

23) Movie Scientists in Lab Coats

2010-04-12T13:37:00.003-04:00

We've met* a lot of scientists who do important, sciencey work, often in highly high-tech sciencey places where a lot experimental, cutting edge science is happening.

Many never wear lab coats. Some do, occasionally. These occasions include and are limited to those in which they are in labs, doing lab work. They do not, contrary to what every movie ever would have you believe, wear them during the other just-kinda-being-a-scientist times.

What started as a B-movie way of indicating "THIS IS THE SCIENTIST CHARACTER WHO WILL PROBABLY BE EATEN BY AN ALIEN SOON" has become standard in unintentionally B-movie-quality movies and, well, pretty much everything else outside of the world of actual scientists, and now ranks up there with "That's just stupid enough to work!" as among the most ubiquitous, least-logical, and the-facts-of-reality-defying cliches.

*Well, not met, but heard about.

22) Tiger Woods, I guess

2010-04-09T12:33:00.004-04:00

We actually can't decide if it's Tiger Woods, the sport of golf, the whole world of golf, the media fascination with Tiger Woods as an athlete, the media obsession with Tiger Woods as an adulterer, the fact that the media spends more time on reporting on Tiger Woods' various indiscretions than on news, the insinuation that any of this means Tiger Woods owes me or anyone else who is not a member of his immediate family an apology, or the creepy, self-indulgent commercial featuring the voice of Tiger Woods' dead father* that we actually hate in this case. But either way, it all seems to orbit around the general gravitational field that appears to be Tiger Woods, so we guess we just kinda have to blame him.

At least this is ~~pretty~~ incredibly funny:

*It's all these things, just to be clear.

21) Starbucks Sizes

2010-04-08T12:52:00.006-04:00

A couple years ago, we criticized Starbucks in general for all its sins, but this one deserves more attention.

In the real world, we have an unambiguous system of drink sizes: "small", which is small, "medium", which is bigger than small, but smaller than large, and thus medium, and "large", which is large. We'll even accept some of the more creative names in light of their reasonable accuracy, like 7-11's "Big Gulp", which is big and probably entails some gulping. Or the now-defunct Mountain Dew "Big Slam", which is also big, and you could at least see some theoretical slamming happening, I guess.

It's reasonable to assume Starbucks' world looks something like this.

But in the world whose laws are apparently consistent with coffee costing upwards of five dollars, such a reasonable, logical system appears to not be necessary, as when one goes to Starbucks, instead of a small, one can order a "tall", which means "large" or, at the very least, "not small", instead of a medium, one can order a "grande", which means "large", and instead of a large, a "venti", which means "20".

This is the exactly the opposite of the reason we have names for things in the first place, but at least the arbitrary numbers that pass for "prices" the appear on the menu next to the made-up and inaccurate size names are correspondingly illogical. So we'll give them that.

20) Family Feud

2010-03-31T17:12:00.006-04:00

Any show that has been around since your grandparents were your age and has remained essentially unchanged in the interim should set off some alarms in the first place. In the case of "Family Feud", however, the similarities transcend the superficial. Sure, as it was then, the show today still has very little to do with grievances that span generations between two clans of relatives vying for territorial control and local political influence and far more to do with five closely-or-otherwise related individuals guessing what 100 random (often incredibly stupid) people think about jarringly inane and irrelevant topics, such as what the coldest month is, or, living or dead, who the most famous "Napoleon" is.

Somehow, they didn't qualify for "Jeopardy!"

But more importantly, as it was then, the "Family Feud" now remains unaware of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown vs. The Board of Education, since "Family Feud" remains stubbornly in the pre-desegregation state of mind, and continues to use the show as a platform to prove or disprove the superiority or inferiority of this or that race of people.

I guess the name "Race Wars, Wherein People Guess What Random Other People Think About Stupid Things In Order To Win Unimpressive Sums Of Money" isn't catchy enough, but it is, of course, far more accurate.

19) People Who Miss The Point Of Headphones

2010-03-30T14:58:00.005-04:00

Oh, yeah, dude standing like five people away from me on the subway, turn that up! Because, as it is, I can only absolutely hear the music you're listening to with perfect clarity and absolutely no effort whatsoever, and that song's my JAM!

We are all the guy in the hoodie.

Oh, yep, okay, and now you're singing along to it! Awesome!

18) Overly Presumptuous Signs

2010-03-26T19:46:00.006-04:00

Listen, that sign on the bus: we just have a problem with being thanked for things we have yet to not do, so if you don't mind waiting for me to complete the task of not using my cell phone and for turning it to "silent" before you thank me for doing it, it'd be a lot less annoying and needlessly passive aggressive.

It's like the roommate your friend once had, who always came home from work looking all disheveled and being like, "Hey, guys, listen, I gotta be up super early for work tomorrow so I just wanna say thanks in advance for not playing your Playstation games as loud as you usually do tonight. Thanks, guys." But in sign form.

17) Uh...Whatever This Is.

2010-03-22T10:31:00.009-04:00

We're not entirely sure what this thing is or where it came from, but we have noticed its recent ubiquity around the web and have learned that it expresses a fondness for tattoos/being naked, isn't so much in favor of non-whites/non-Nazis, and, in some way, it managed to make that adorable girl from Demolition Man sad.

As you are no doubt aware, The Daily Hated maintains some pretty lofty standards, among which are a staunch anti-Nazi* and pro-That-Adorable-Girl-From-Demolition-Man** stance, and when those particular standards are offended all over the internet (note: The Daily Hated is largely pro-internet), we just can't let it go by without expressing our dissatisfaction.

*The Daily Hated does not target specific groups and political doctrines, unless those groups and doctrines promote things like genocide, ethnic cleansing, and being an asshole.
**As it turns out, that girl was also the same girl in Speed and recently won a major award for her role in the movie All About Steve. It seems that she is quite popular and well-known, and The Daily Hated's research team has been fired.

16) "Everybody Loves A " T-Shirts

2010-03-17T12:59:00.006-04:00

Very few things, historically, have as perfectly blended demonstrable lack of truth with bold self-righteous assumptions and self-evident annoying trends, especially not in t-shirt form (though "Vote for Pedro" t-shirts come pretty close, in all their "You've seen Napoleon Dynamite, right? And you just love it, right? And think my t-shirt is just the awesomest allusion to my having-seen-Napoleon-Dynamite-and-thinking-it's-awesome-ness ever, right"-nessistic glory).

Uh....yeah(?)

Sure, the "___ is for Lovers" trend is overdone, but at least it's sort of self-consciously funny in its brazenly random and occasionally hilariously untrue claims. The "Everybody Loves..." shirts, though, seem most often to endorse the view that everybody loves either a Jewish or an Irish girl, and while we in no way mean to say that we haven't met plenty of absolutely delightful, fully love-worthy girls of Jewish and/or Irish decent, the point remains that, on top of being sort of annoying, the inclusion of the word "everybody" unfortunately represents something of a tragically willful misreading of the not-entirely-unpersecuted history of those two particular groups. We embrace promoting the universal love of all peoples* and ethnic groups and we appreciate self-actualization...it's just that, as with all things, we resent so-doing in t-shirt form.

*except the terrible ones, of course...hence this blog.

15) Saying "May or May Not"

2010-03-15T12:28:00.003-04:00

We already have a word that means "may or may not", and that word is "may".

This may or may not be an adorable puppy

Saying "may or may not" is just another example of the trend toward adding words to something in a vain, meaningless attempt to come across as more thoughtful or significant than one's point ever was to begin with, or simply because one does not think that one has enough to say on a given topic and thus feels the need to be more verbose than is in any way necessary, and instead merely creates a needlessly wordy redundancy, and resulting in an enormous, narcissistic, inarguable waste of time; not just your time, but both yours and my own, and also everybody else's as well, too, also.

14) Whoever Is Responsible For NBC's Schedule

2010-03-12T15:09:00.006-05:00

Let's forget about the whole Conan thing for a second:

How does it make sense to follow up Community, Parks and Recreation, The Office, and 30 Rock with The Marriage Ref and what passes for The Tonight Show? Is that not a little like following a trip to magical chocolate unicorn town with cockpunches and puppy cancer? It's like the worst dad in the world being all like, "Hey, kids, having fun at Disneyland? Geuss where we're going next! Nickelback concert/tooth surgery!"

And is NBC even aware of the fact that Trauma is still on the air, or will it just be another one of those shows that will only be canceled in like ten years once somebody notices it's still there despite the fact that its most prominent star has now somehow become John Stamos?

Okay, and let's remember the whole Conan thing, now, too.

13) "Remember Me" Reviews

2010-03-11T12:51:00.004-05:00

By now, "spoiling" the end of Remember Me is pretty much like "spoiling" the end The Passion of the Christ (and if you still haven't seen it, in the end it turns out that Mel Gibson is completely insane).

If you care enough about Remember Me to be reading reviews of Remember Me, then it's a given by now that you already know how it ends, and if you don't care enough then the point is moot. And yet film critics, for whatever (probably legal) reason, still insist on dancing around the only thing about that movie anyone wants to talk about, as though you don't know how it ends.

Still, interestingly enough, Remember Me might best be read as a sort of conceptual piece whose sole motivation is to get every critic in America to actually finally universally agree on something, since literally every review of Remember Me includes a variation on one of the two statements: "Remember Me is pretty good, until..." or "Remember Me is already pretty terrible, and then..." And it's pretty hard to know of and/or see the ending of Remember Me and not agree that said ending belongs in a completely different movie, preferably one that never, ever gets made. It's as bizarre as it is nauseatingly offense. It's one of those traumatic and horrific sites that unites us as a nation (the ending I mean, not the ending's subject, but also, I should mention, the ending's subject).

But it's just annoying to see the don't-ruin-the-ending dance play out in print, especially since Remember Me goes so far out of its way to not keep its own secret. Some clues:

Remember Me is pretty aggresively set in New York, as evidenced by the yellow cabs and Robert Pattinson's (whose character's father is a pretty big deal in the business world...) strained movie version of a New York accent.
Remember Me is set in 2001. In New York. In 2001.
Remember Me is set in the summer of 2001. In New York.
Are you getting this? How about if the movie were about two disaffected twenty-somethings trying to navigate their own troubled romance while striving to step out of the shadows of their overbearing parents, but the twenty-somethings lived in ancient Pompeii. Would you know how it ends? What if the guy's father was a vulcanologist?
Remember Me is pointedly titled "Remember Me" and not "Don't Worry About Having To Remember Me, Since We Got Married And Lived Happily Ever After And You Didn't Die In The World Trade Center On 9/11"

12) The Term "Visually Stunning"

2010-03-10T12:12:00.003-05:00

"Visually stunning" officially became a grating cliche last week when the term was used for the 10 billionth time, in this case by an anchor from Des Moines, Iowa's KCCI, who used it to describe Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

A scene from What Dreams May Come, a visually stunning, hideous, unwatchable piece of pseudospiritual new age dreck. Also starring Cuba Gooding Jr.

Invariably, the term "visually stunning" is used to describe a bad movie with lots of colors, state-of-the-art CGI effects, and a high contrast ratio. Good movies that also happen to look good are referred to by other terms, like "award-winning" or "good". "Visually stunning" should not be confused with the term "eye candy", which also refers to bad movies that are nice to look at (like Legends of the Fall), but are not visually stunning because they incorporate too few colors or special effects.

And none of this is to say that we expect that, in a culture obsessed with finding something nice to say about absolutely everything (you wouldn't want to offend the artistic sincerity of the sensitive visionaries behind Old Dogs, after all, so you should probably find something you liked about it, like its family-friendly themes or the fact that it ends), the term will go away or the trend that birthed it will subside, but we can we come up with another term? Optically staggering? Imagistically profound? Stupid? I'm just thinking out loud here.

11) Diesel

2010-03-09T12:28:00.005-05:00

We admire truth in advertising. We do.

So we can't help but have a certain kind of perverse admiration for Diesel's new "Be Stupid" campaign. Because, yeah, paying more (or even slightly less) than $100 for non-precious-gem-laden denim, or any more than $10 (which we should caveat by noting that the cheapest, plainest-black, non-gold-lined of which available on the Diesel website is $30) for a $2 winter cap, or ever owning anything called a "mandanaa" is really, really, incredibly stupid. As is actually referring to individuals whose job is to sell you jeans as "apostles". Amazingly, superbly, jaw-droppingly stupid.

Where this all falls apart is Diesel's fully unsupported claim that "Smart listens to the head. Stupid listens to the heart". In point of fact, stethoscopes listen to the heart. Stupid listens to a stupid head; the kind of head that thinks to itself, "Ouch, all this money is itchy."

10) Coffee Commercials

2010-03-03T15:59:00.004-05:00

It's funny because most people we know wouldn't even know how to spell their own names until they've actually had their first cup coffee after waking up, and they sure as hell wouldn't care to try if asked. Just as there is no highlight to one's root canal, there really is no "best part" of waking up, but at least being up starts to become semi-tolerable after the caffeine kicks in.

Be warned: this is the whitest ~~commercial~~ thing ever made, and watching it may cause you to stab yourself, hate Christmas, or both.

So it goes without saying that no real person is actually all that interested in discussing their recent marriage proposal and that they'll be really happy to acknowledge you just got home from Iraq just as soon as the coffee's ready, but until then, don't care.

Unless, of course, all that's available is Folgers or Maxwell House. In which case, you'll have to wait for them to get some real, non-disgusting coffee before they so much as feign interest.

9) Jenny McCarthy

2010-03-02T13:59:00.003-05:00

We at TDH believe in second chances. It's just that we don't necessarily believe in eighth or ninth chances*. If the latest iteration of Jenny McCarthy as "Science-denying Jenny McCarthy" were the only iteration of Jenny McCarthy, maybe we'd just sort of give it a pass and be like, "Pffft...well, that chick sure is bat-shit crazy..."

When you look at this picture, I bet the first thing you think to yourself is, "I wonder what that person's views on science are. Regardless, I bet they are infallible and accurate and won't lead to my kid dying of measles".

But unfortunately, this comes on the heels of "Star of 'The Jenny McCarthy Show' Jenny McCarthy", "Co-host of 'Singled Out' Jenny McCarthy", "Resident model for Candie's shoes (a brand as coma-inducingly annoying and high-quality as the deliberately misspelled name implies) Jenny McCarthy", and Jim Carrey's girlfriend. Jenny's "personal, emotional truth" about what causes autism (which differs from the actual truth in that it is the opposite but is apparently no less valid, somehow) at this point only serves to prove the old adage that it's a seriously, seriously bad idea to listen to the wide-ranging implications of the opinions of people whose last name is "McCarthy".

*Note the lack of posts about Chris Hardwick. We proved our point.

8) Teabaggers

2010-03-01T14:28:00.004-05:00

Aside from the fact that today's Tea Partiers are both taxed (though admittedly not as much as they were during the Reagan administration) and entitled to vote to elect their fellow citizens to act as their representation (assuming they don't live in Ohio or Florida), thus apparently revising the "no taxation without representation" mantra to something along the lines of "no taxation, but also with representation, oh and don't take away medicare, public libraries, or the police and fire departments, and improve these damn roads!", and that none of them seem willing to commit any acts of nonviolent demonstration that might land them in serious legal trouble and/or at risk for long-term imprisonment or execution, these Tea Parties are identical in every way to the original Boston Tea Party by which they claim to be inspired.

Not that anyone should ever take them seriously, however. As any good historian, ethnic minority, and/or Eastern European Jew will tell you, far-right wing reactionary nationalistic groups with clear anti-immigration and racist overtones spreading reactionary propaganda masked as folksy patriotism and based far more on projected fears than on authentic grievances that arise at a time of extreme economic turmoil and a fractured, vulnerable cultural climate usually tend to end pretty well.

7) Kate Episodes

2010-02-26T18:00:00.006-05:00

What if someone came to you and said, "I'll give you a million dollars, but there's a catch: twice every year, you can't do anything fun with it. In fact, portions of that million dollars will be used to do something gratingly, numbingly unfun. With freckles."?

"Next week, on Lo...or, oh, geez, really? Another one? Okay...Two weeks from now, on Lost!..."

Or, perhaps a better analogy is this: What if someone said to you you can eat really, really expensive steak (or organic heirloom tomatoes or whatever the vegetarian equivalent of steak is) once a week for 16 out of 18 weeks out of the year, absolutely free of charge and delivered directly to your home, but for 2 of the weeks you have to listen to the Born-Again Christian Baldwin brother read you the phone book while you have eye cancer, because it says so in Evangeline Lilly's contract?

Would you take the steak, America? Would you?

6) The Term "Foodie"

2010-02-18T14:00:00.002-05:00

It's not really so much that labeling oneself a "foodie" isn't a perfectly reasonable and succinct way of saying "I'm an upper-middle class white person who wants to talk about how much I like food but remains cautious about giving the impression that I'm some kind of fat pig because the kind of food I'm talking bad is either hard to pronounce and/or is made with the same sorts of things fat people like but with organic ingredients, about which fat people don't care", or, more simply, "I'm an upper-middle class white person".

Above: Not a foodie, apparently

Rather, it has more to do with the utter lack of necessity for even having such a word when your NPR tote bag and daily conversational references to Mark Bittman say everything for you. (It's probably worth pointing out that stunningly few upper-middle class white people refer to themselves as "wateries" or "shelteries")

5) Jersey Shore

2010-02-17T11:41:00.003-05:00

The trouble with watching something for ironic purposes is that Nielsen provides no box one can check that reads, "Were you watching this program entirely through the lens of irony?" All Nielsen (and television executives) care about at the end of the day is ratings, and, as such, Sham-wow, Snuffy, The Decider and the rest of the Jersey Shore crew have been given a second season and more money than you're likely to make in your lifetime.

Well done, America

So, congratulations "I just watch that show because I like to make fun of those people and their unbelievable shallowness" crowd: You've just officially given "celebrity" status to what amounts to the human equivalent of test patterns with tans and oedipal complexes, subjecting the rest of us to years of guest appearances on awards shows, unwarranted appearances on day time talk shows, endless covers of Us and OK!, and ceaseless protests from the this-and-that community claiming such-and-such person promotes so-on-and-so-forth stereotypes that do nothing but increase the very celebrity they so deeply disagree with. Meanwhile, people with things to contribute to society remain unemployed.

4) Using The "Requiem For A Dream" Theme For Absolutely F*&%ing Everything

2010-02-16T15:18:00.004-05:00

This means you, Olympic athletes (especially but not limited to figure skaters), people who make trailers for epic motion pictures, editors of montages of tragic-turned-heroic sports stories for ESPN, and almost literally every fan-made YouTube tribute video for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and/or any number of cult genre-fiction television series (and, I dunno, local car salesmen, let's say?).

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnd SKATE!!!

While we completely understand your overwhelming desire to associate yourself with a painful, dreary, hopelessly tragic arthouse saga of drug addiction and disaffection and its brutal, crushing consequences, it needs to be brought your attention that there is other (and, in some cases, reasonably good) music at your disposal, and much of it is actually thematically appropriate for what you're doing.

3) Scott Brown

2010-01-21T11:30:00.002-05:00

It is not customary for TDH to go after specific people except in cases (like Scott Stapp, Kate Hudson, and Scott Stapp) where said people are so richly deserving of it.

That said, Scott Brown is more than just Scott Brown the person (possibly out of necessity, since by even the most generous allowances of the laws of thermodynamics, a self-contained Scott Brown would simply dissipate into nothingness under the considerable persistence of his own lack of integrity and substance).

Scott Brown, good American, whose daughters ~~and~~ ~~integrity~~ (SOLD!) are now for sale to the highest bidder

When we say "Scott Brown", we're actually referring to a whole culture of Scott Brown that somehow transcends the inherit douchebaggetry of phony daughter-whoring opportunists like Scott Brown that's even transparent enough for Glenn Beck to see through.

The Scott Brown in question, then, is actually the Scott Brown of the imagination; the one in which half of the Obama voters who voted for him did so because they believe the health care bill currently haunting the halls of congress is not progressive enough. The kind of Scott Brown that is elected to defeat said bill after having run on a bill-defeating platform (neglecting to mention his phoniness, and homophobia, and racism; the one supported by "Tea Party" folks whose windmill-chasing platform is staked firmly in the bottomless pit of the imaginary) and then presumably would disappear back into the imaginary recesses of imaginary-Scott-Brown-world, to be replaced by some kind of non-Scott Brownish entity who would not spend the rest of his time doing the bidding of special interest groups and corporate lobbyists and promoting an agenda of fear, which, of course, real-world-Scott-Brown will.

This sort of reasoning, it appears, is one now widely embraced by the American electorate.

But, having said that, we also despise the actual homophobic racist that is Scott Brown.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

2) Inside Edition

2010-01-14T14:40:00.002-05:00

If the world were mostly comprised of clips from shocking YouTube videos, the imagination of alienated exurban middle-aged women, and whatever a "Heidi Montag" is, then Inside Edition would probably count as a "news program".

We may have lost Walter Cronkite in 2009, but we'll never lose endless ways to crucify, burn in effigy, and/or shit upon his memory.

Adjusted for the world as it actually is (the one with causes that have effects, neutrinos, human suffering, religious fundamentalism and the like), Inside Edition should really be legally bound to sell itself for what it really is, which is tough to explain without complicated equations, but breaks down to some sort of assemblage of Deborah Norville's lifeless mouth, a complex array of levers and pulleys, bright colors, and a random arrangement of the list of that day's most-Googled words.

1*) Kansas

2010-01-07T08:20:00.005-05:00

We're sure there are plenty of lovely people who have come from Kansas, like Amelia Earhart, Paul Rudd, and Auntie Em.

Kansas (above) is also known as the ojwhopfemmmmmmmmeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeghrhsgmmmmmmmmmmmmfen.e,.eeee...oh, shit, sorry...I fell asleep.

None of which excuses the far, far greater crimes of Steve Doocy, outlawing the teaching of evolution, "Dust in the Wind", the Chiefs (who we know are based in Missouri, but double shame on Missouri for unnecessarily proliferating the more-than-adequate Kansas-ness of America, and for continuing to refer to the Chiefs as a "professional football team"), and, of course, this kind of bullshit.**

*Astute readers will note that this is not, in fact, the first post, but the 226th. Devout Incans, the staff of the Daily Hated follows the Incan calendar, which stipulates that all blog posting be viewed as a cycle, and that all revert back to "1" on the day that the Roman Catholic Church arbitrarily refers to as "January 1, 2010".

**The Daily Hated understands that even crazy right-wing fundamentalist Christianists find Westboro Baptist Church "too crazy" for them. The Daily Hated would also like to note that they've never been to Kansas, and that they don't really hate it, but they absolutely do hate all the things listed above. Still, any state that gives us Paul Rudd can't be all bad...***

***It's pretty bad.

225) Kay Jewelers Commercials

2009-11-25T16:45:00.001-05:00

Very few subgenres of commercials fall victim to unintentional self-parody so readily and easily as do commercials for jewelry. But as cloying and nauseating as Jared's commercials are, nothing quite lives up to the consistently-divorced-from-reality-and-logic parallel dimensions presented in the world according to Kay. More specifically, this world:

So, let's get this straight: This guy, who apparently doesn't know very much sign language, nonetheless knows a deaf women well enough to have established the kind of deep, personal relationship with her that two people presumably would share before one buys the other a gold watch? Look, unless they've played a lot of unusually deep and revealing games of Pictionary, this is a fucking impossible scenario.

Also, "every kiss" begins with "E". Assholes.

224) Anthropomorphic Food

2009-11-23T13:07:00.006-05:00

Sure, people eat living things (after someone else kills that living thing for the person in question, of course), but such things tend to lack human characteristics, like opposable thumbs and verbal communication skills, which helps the individual maintain the important divide between traditional carnivorism and its more cannibalistic cousin.

I mean....(!!!!)

People also eat non-living things, such as cookies, M&Ms, and frosted mini wheats. There is absolutely no reason to suspect any of these things possess complex reasoning skills and fully-formed social personalities, and yet, presumably to tap in to the under-targeted "adults, 18-35, prone to realizing subtle, mostly animated, cannibalistic fantasies through the consumption of products high in processed sugar and children, 3 and up, who wish to develop such tendencies" market, advertising agencies have somehow devised a way to suggest that eating candy and candy-like breakfast cereal is philosophically less moral than is eating meat.

But, then, we're not the experts on the buying trends of (sociopathic, murderous) consumers.

223) The Jay Leno Show

2009-11-09T13:50:00.004-05:00

Now old people can enjoy softball, unoffensive, obvious topical humor and inept interviews with bland celebrities and be asleep a full hour and a half earlier! Unlike before, however, Jay Leno now also treats us to tortuously drawn out "comedy" pieces from up and coming "comics" and gives Americans a brand new way of screwing over Conan O'Brien.

We'll give Jay Leno this, though: after just 24 mind-numbingly repetitive hours of national concern for the emotional well-being of Taylor Swift, he managed to pass Kanye West as the douchiest man in America

"So, Kanye, what would your recently-deceased mother think of what you did last night? I mean, assuming she weren't dead. Sorry, does talking that make you uncomfortable? Alright then, how about a song?!" (old white person clapping sounds)

222) Jeff Dunham

2009-10-29T10:59:00.003-04:00

At last we've finally reached the end of our tireless nationwide search to combine the painfully unfunny topical "humor" of Dane Cook with the repugnant, offensively blatant racism of racists*! And all of it comes wrapped in America's long-beloved #1 entertainment format, bad ventriloquism!

*Unless you've found some non-racist way to interpret Achmed the Dead Terrorist...?

Ohh, hahahahahaha!! And look! He's wearing a turban! Just like real brown people I'm unjustly afraid of!

221) Famewhore Parents

2009-10-17T15:43:00.005-04:00

Now that Jon & Kate are famous and their show is probably ending, reality TV executives are scrambling around to find the next wacky family who will capture America's attention and then turn into shrill, evil, baby-devouring monsters. Might I suggest two possible candidates from this week's news cycle who are evidently already to the shrill, evil, baby-devouring stage?

First up, we have "Nic," mom to an infant son and the sort of person who takes anything going wrong in her life as a personal affront. She posted a lengthy rant on her blog about how TSA agents at the Atlanta airport freaked out on her when her son's pacifier clip set off the metal detector. She claimed that she was separated from her kid, held for a long time (thus almost missing her flight), and was so stressed/agitated by being separated FROM HER SON!!!1! that she was forced to take her "emergency Xanax." [Note: you will need at least one emergency Xanax to keep your head from hurting while reading her cray cray post.] While many of us who have dealt with airport delays and incompetence felt for Nic and her situation, TSA was not amused. Their official blogger, Bob (yes, they have an official TSA blog) posted security cam video of the entire incident and basically showed that Nic is a big ol' faker.

But Nic is far from the biggest faker of the week. That honor goes to Richard Heene of Colorado. Heene, an "amateur scientist" who was building a giant balloon in the backyard. One of his kids, Falcon (yeah, seriously) allegedly got in the balloon and started flying away. Like any good dad, Richard called the media and then later deigned to call 911. The "Balloon Boy" story captivated the 24 hour news cycle. Then, the balloon came down. Then, there was no one in it. That's because little Falcon was safely at home, where he'd been the whole time. As for poppa Richard, he's apparently been trying to shop a reality show about his family to production companies and networks. Plus they were on that show "Wife Swap." Twice.

In the following clip, we learn why it always backfires when famewhore parents try to drag their kids into their retarded schemes. While being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Falcon lets it slip that the whole incident was "for the show." You know Octomom is so pissed she didn't think of this first.

[Oh, also, Falcon farts about 40 seconds into the interview. We would never tell you that and embarrass a poor child in that way, though, obviously.]

220) Baseball Announcer Malapropisms and Other Verbal Gaffes

2009-10-08T10:31:00.006-04:00

What would expect Dennis Eckersley, Chip Caray, David Wells, and Buck Martinez to know a bunch of stuff about? If you said "stuff about baseball", then you'd be (in most cases) accurate (except Martinez, who only knows stuff about baseball as it's played in the bizarre parallel dimension known as Buck Martinez Land).

If you said any variation of the following...

-Verbal communication

-Grammar

-The organization of English language

-Word meanings

...you'd be wrong

No, seriously: the guy on the right is paid to say things to you live on national television. That's his *job*. This is the world you live in.

Take these couple of recently-uttered gems from yesterday's 10-plus hours of postseason day one coverage:

"His heartbeat must be pounding" - Of course, most of us are familiar with the sensation of our hearts pounding. Our heartbeats, which themselves are resultant of the pounding of the heart doing the pounding-level beating, do not themselves pound.

"Whether the Twins lose or they win this game or not..." - This is not so much the product of an inadequate grasp on language as it is the result of someone's overambitious desire to continue speaking, even when thoroughly unnecessary. Those of use with basic reasoning skills needed only to hear the first four words of this phrase followed by the eigth and ninth words in order to extract the intended information.

"That's really tantamount among their concerns right now" - Errr...that's really the equivalent measure of...the...among...their concerns right now? Huh. Okay. I mean, I'd have gone with "paramount". Y'know...so that my sentence would have made sense? But sure, cool. Whatever.

Look to our Twitter feed for more malapropisms and linguistic stress fractures as we hear them.

219) People Who Call Champagne "Champers"

2009-10-04T20:37:00.006-04:00

Contrary to popular belief, not everything needs a cutesy nickname. Sure, when people are little it's sweet to give them little singsongy nicknames, but they can't last forever. For example, "Paulie-waulie" may make for an adorable six-year-old, but if he's not a plain old Paul by age 12 or so you can pretty much guarantee the dude isn't getting laid, ever.

Sometimes, things are so great that no nickname is required. Shoes are just shoes, not shoesies. Chocolate is just chocolate, not chocowocko. And champagne is just champagne, not "champers." If you aren't mature enough to know that the yummy-tasting bubbly stuff in the skinny glass has a nice proper French name, then you aren't old enough to be drinking it.

Note #1: The only exception to the "It's called Champagne" rule is if you reference this classic SNL sketch with Christopher Walken in it:

Note #2: The other person who runs this blog got all married or whatever this weekend, and while there was champagne served, he is not friends with lame people who mispronounce the name of the magical bubbly candy water and this post wasn't inspired by anyone in particular. So, like, congrats and stuff, dude.

218) Twitter

2009-09-24T12:44:00.004-04:00

It's easy to understand the unwaveringly seductive appeal of a website that allows you to know how Dennis Haysbert felt about "All About Steve" and follow the every mindless thought of your one "political" friend who doesn't really know anything about politics or having friends in the same place. Seriously, what's not annoying about the one thing that everybody who knows very little about modern technology/life won't stop talking about, from its astonishing power to break up the relationship of the two blandest people on Earth to its apparent power to save Iran or something, Twitter is to today what television was to the 40s: a pretty cool idea that won't actually intentionally do anything worthwhile for roughly 60 years.

Plus, when the thing breaks down, you get to see a, um, whale with, uh, birds. So. There's that. No saccharine-soaked annoyance there. No sir.

So we can expect plenty of Twitter equivalents to "The Newlywed Game", "Small Wonder", and "Wheel of Fortune", dotted with the occasional Twitterverse equivalent of the Moon landing and "Twin Peaks" until finally the Twitter gets its "Lost".

It's worth noting/mourning the fact typing the term "Twitterverse" did not yield a red squiggly underlining. Repent.

Also, because we want to keep up the appearance of actual work without actually doing to much of it, we now have a Twitter page/account/tweeting area/thing:
http://twitter.com/TheDailyHated

217) Gerard Butler's Agent

2009-09-23T08:17:00.004-04:00

Gerard Butler holds Hollywood's dubious distinction of being the biggest star to have made zero (0) good movies. A sampling:

-Time Line
-Lara Croft: Whatever of Such and Such
-Dracula 2000
-P.S. I Love You (the memory of which upon typing the title, it should be noted, just caused a pixie to die)
-Gamer

Which is not that surprising, since Butler also holds the dubious distinction of both having "burst on to the scene"* in the Joel Schumacher-directed big-screen adaptation of the most overly and unjustly beloved musical of all time, "The Phantom of the Opera" and having starred in the highest-grossing feature-length Playstation1 cutscene/gay porn of all time, "300".

Thing is, unlike, say, Jennifer Aniston (with whom he is apparently in a one-shirted relationship...) , the only real problem we have with Butler is every single movie he has made ever. Shouldn't we love him? He's Scottish! And the list of things from Scotland that we love far outweigh and outnumber Butler's filmography (Craig Ferguson, David Tennant, Travis, the entire cast of "Trainspotting", transparent tape). And he sort of looks like he might be Australian, too. Like a Scottish Russell Crowe. Aren't these people supposed to make good movies? Where's Butler's "Gladiator"??

Oh, wait.

*remind us to do one about annoying Hollywood-"journalism" lingo

216) Carrie Prejean

2009-09-01T12:00:00.004-04:00

We're not exactly sure which religion Carrie Prejean belongs to, but apparently it's built around two principles: Gays can't get married, and the first amendment of the United States Constitution protects individuals from doing whatever the hell they want. She refers to it as "Christianity", whereas other notable historical figures, such as Jesus, would take issue with this particular interpretation of Christianity.

The problem for Ms. Prejean is that she has forgotten to adequately educate herself on the inner workings of two key documents: The United States Constitution (on which the United States Constitution is based) and the New Testament of the Bible (on which Christianity is based).

As to the first point, reading the New Testament as some kind of carte blanche for gay bashing wouldn't be unlike reading "The Lord of the Rings" and surmising its central message is that select trees can talk slowly and stage uprisings against evil wizards. Getting past whether or not this is even true, it sort of overlooks the slightly more significant themes.

As to the second point, I'd like to pose this analogy: Let's say you hire me to do a job. Let's say that job is customer service for, say, T-Mobile. And let's say someone calls the customer service line and asks me what I think of T-Mobile's service, and I say T-Mobile's service is a bunch of shit and, oh, by the way, caller, I think you're a heathen. Just to top it off, let's also say I never show up for work, and happen to exclaim loudly that I don't believe my co-workers deserve equal protection under the law. Especially the Mexicans. And let's say I go on to point out that this is merely a reflection of my religious beliefs. And let's say this rubs the people at T-Mobile the wrong way. They then have the right to fire me.

They cannot, however, have me arrested. So says the Constitution.

Civics!

215) Starscream

2009-08-27T12:17:00.004-04:00

The only bad guy in history whose primary threat arises in his unconquerable ability to be incredibly annoying. Even by the narrow standards set upon 1980s-cartoons-as-toy-commercial villainy, Starscream still stands out as a particularly thin caricature of evil; a castrated Skeletor with an anxiety disorder, with a voice that seems to be the result of a horrific accident involving the fusing of Paul Lynde and an auto-tune machine.

Megatron makes another good point about Starscream's inability to lead androids to a picnic. We totally forgot to even mention that.

It's worth pointing out that, somehow, given that even the most devout Transformers fans (like the guy who legally changed his name to Optimus Prime) wished someone would find a way to ~~write~~ wipe Starscream ~~off the show~~ out of existence and memory, Michael Bay still found a way to ruin Starscream.

214) The Opposing Team

2009-08-26T11:16:00.002-04:00

Did you know that the opposing team only landed the totally overrated star player because of bullshit union rules that favor teams in markets that are (totally arbitrarily, btw) deemed "big market"? Did you also know that my hometown's team never even wanted to land that player in the first place, because, while on paper his season-average 33 home runs, 100 RBI and .390 OBP appear to make him a valuable asset, his lack of defensive range actually make him such a liability that, over the course of a season, he can actually be expected to allow more runs than he scores? It's true, and you're a total idiot.

This guy's never going to win a championship ring while wearing the opposing team's uniform. Fuckin' face it. Never going to happen. Not even for $23 million a year.

Your hometown team sucks. Sure, maybe if you look at the games-won-to-games-lost statistics, it would appear that your hometown team is technically superior to that of my own, but let me ask you this: stacked up against each other, head to head, do you really think my hometown team's three top starters couldn't easily win a three game series against the opposing team's three top starters? Please! That's not even debatable! Not to mention the fact that the opposing team's number two guy is totally streaky and relies way to much on his off-speed stuff. Any good, patient-hitting team would OWN that guy. The only reason he has 18 wins this season is that all of those wins have come from totally bullshit teams, like the Orioles. I'm serious. I could prove that to you right now. That guy has faced all the worst teams this season. Those numbers are deceptive!

And don't even get me started on the opposing team's park. That place is total bullshit. My mom could hit for the cycle in that place, and off the opposing team's mockery of a starting rotation, that wouldn't even be that difficult anyway. Face it, the only reason the opposing team is even winning against my area's vastly superior home team boils down to inflated salaries and a favorable schedule. Not to mention the clear bias the umpires have always had against my area's team. How do you throw a guy out for arguing balls and strikes from center field??? Ridiculous.

213) Betsy McCaughey

2009-08-24T13:58:00.003-04:00

In case you were wondering, the second instance of Jon Stewart (who, as a comedian, is tragically also America's only responsible member of the "news media")* costing one or more people their jobs simply by rationally confronting them with that harrowing nuisance, the truth.

It took a couple weeks after Stewart's appearance on Crossfire (god this never gets old) in 2004 for that show to get canceled. Perhaps it speaks to the efficiency of conservative zealots that McCaughey lost her job the next day.

Warning to TDH readers - The following fifteen minutes is incredibly, ridiculously worth wasting.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 1

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 1

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

*Okay, Bill Maher **
**also a comedian

212) TBS's Strained, Inaccurate Definitions Of The Words "Very" And "Funny"

2009-08-19T13:58:00.006-04:00

Which, when combined, apparently mean something between "moderately watchable if you have nothing else to do and aren't easily offended by bad writing and the accidental embrace of outdated stereotypes and don't mind re-runs of Yes, Dear, Just Shoot Me, and the Friends episode you've somehow already seen eight times even if you never watched Friends" and "The Bill Engvall Show", which, due to some kind of vast cosmic oversight, is somehow entering its 3rd season.

Hahahah! Get it? Oh, heavily-censored Sex and the City episodes. What delights you bring to my ~~basic~~ free cable.

211) Robert Pattinson/Kristen Stewart Fan-Fic

2009-08-17T09:13:00.005-04:00

If you were to take the covers of celebrity tabloids as gospel truth, then Robert Pattinson -known for his work in the movie adaptations of the critically beloved neo-gothic best-selling sweeping dark epic series "Harry Potter"*- and Kristen Stewart's off-screen relationship puts any fantasy-based relationship, wherein they fall in love but he's a vampire and then she almost leaves him for a douchey werewolf but they get back together and get married so they can do it (because that's what responsible vampires, who emerge from the minds of Mormon female authors, do) and conceive a vampire baby that almost kills its mother (what with all its vampire-y-ness) and then finally decide they should both be vampires**, to shame.

Anyway, to help you wade through the grating, fabricated epic (and its real-life incarnation as dreamed up by gossip reporters! Zing!), we've crafted this handy visual plot layout of all the possible, choose-your-own-adventure paths of the Robsten Saga!

*HAH! Eat it, "Twilight" lady.
**Spoiler alert! Oh, wait, I guess that should have gone earlier.

210) Old People With Tans*

2009-08-12T11:04:00.004-04:00

Just because we're willing to allow that, in a person's youth, that person makes ill-advised and tacky life/fashion decisions, and that we are thus capable of merely laughing at said person behind said person's back and at his or her own expense, does not mean this doesn't become a different matter altogether when that person reaches retirement age, and should really, really know better.

It is worth noting that this phenomenon is, additionally, really, really gross.

*The Daily Hated would like to stipulate that, in this particular instance, "old" is defined as "any age above 35"

209) Calling Anything Besides A Human Infant "My Baby"

2009-07-28T11:10:00.003-04:00

Some noted examples of non-babies

Unless, of course, you actually spent countless painful hours forcing a Lexus out of your vagina. In which case, uh...it has your eyes?

208) Taco Bell Commercials

2009-07-23T09:51:00.003-04:00

The vast and storied history of fast food advertising has its share of high points (Ronald McDonald and his cadre of acid-trip and/or tainted "meat"-inspired companions; Harold and Kumar's 90-minute magnum opus celebration of cardboard-based burgers; absolutely any and every Jack in the Box commercial) and low points (delusional Wendy's commercials featuring well-adjusted upper-middle class happily married couples dining at Wendy's, with actual silverware; the ungodly marriage of Paris Hilton and Carl's Junior).

But no institution has ever achieved as perfectly proportional a level of quality of food to quality of advertising as Taco Bell, whose commercials lead one to the inevitable conclusion that Taco Bell's marketing department must either a) be clinically insane, b) high, c) clinically insane due to having consumed whatever Taco Bell passes off as "food", or d) all of the above.

Take the mid-90s, for instance, when Taco Bell decided the best way to declare its hipness was to name Little Richard, a man whose popularity peaked a mere 40 years earlier, as the public face of its franchise. The reasoning seemed to be something along the lines of this: "You know what all the kids like these days? Grunge music! And you know what grunge music is? Rock n Roll! And you know who used to be considered a rock n roll artist?? See where I'm going with this??"

Or take more recent advertising, which saw Taco Bell introduce the world to the non-word "melty", which is every bit as cringe-inducing and stomach-churning as the very thought of consuming two bean "burritos" and a large Mr. Pibb. Or, better yet, Taco Bell's false and unfounded claim that anything containing what once could have been described as "lettuce" presented in something vaguely bowl-shaped "technically" constitutes a salad!

Still, all of these ad campaigns lack the poetry and head-slapping inanity of the Taco Bell chihuahua. Chihuahuas! Chihuahuas are Mexican (probably)! And Taco Bell is supposed to also be Mexican (in a similar way that Olive Garden is Italian, or that Madonna is British)!

And so Taco Bell unleashed a seemingly endless series of advertising on us all, with the soberingly honest message , "Taco Bell: Well, dogs seem to like it."

Fair enough, Taco Bell. Fair enough.

(In Memorium: Taco Bell Chihuahua - 1994-2009)

207) Saying "Literally" When You Actually Mean "Not Literally"

2009-07-22T10:59:00.005-04:00

Take, for instance, this claim about Sarah Palin by her spokeswoman Meg Stapleton, that "the world is literally her oyster!"

(Advisory message: in order to sheild your brain cells from trauma-related induced mercy-suicide, you can skip to the 3:30 mark for the comment in question)

It's worth noting that Sarah Palin and many of her loyal followers
already have some inaccurate beliefs about the world, notably that it's roughly 6000 years old and that it was created over the course of 24 hours by a morally ambiguous superbeing with strikingly similar attributes to those of Fantastic Four nemesis Galactus, it is nonetheless a demonstrable fact that "the world" (defined as "the earth or globe, considered as a planet") is not literally the same thing as "Sarah Palin's oyster" (defined as "any of sev eral edible, marine, bivalve mollusks of the family Ostreidae, having an irregularly shaped shell, occurring on the bottom or adhering to rocks or other objects in shallow water belonging to the allegedly corrupt former governor of Alaska")

The error here might be easier to understand through illustration:

Special thanks to Mark Russell

206) Fergie-era Black Eyed Peas

2009-07-21T07:32:00.002-04:00

Sure, Yoko Ono is a grating presence who still takes a lot of shit for breaking up the Beatles, but at least Yoko Ono didn't join the Beatles and make them terrible*.

*We were going to make the point that they are also both physically unattractive, but we're professional journalists and we didn't think that would be fair. To Yoko Ono.**

**(Fergie is hideous)

205) Kellie Pickler and Kid Rock? Sure, okay. Whatever.

2009-07-01T11:24:00.004-04:00

We were actually in favor of this sort of thing when it involved John Mayer and Jennifer Aniston. After all, when the two blandest* (and, for some reason, two of the most ubiquitous) people on Earth got together, it made our lives a lot easier. Like consolidating debt: sure, you don't want it around at all, but at least this way it only irritates you in one lump sum.

But for some reason, while this makes perfect sense to us, the rumored year-long-to-date secret union of Kellie Pickler (former American Idol loser; is to county fairs and anything sponsored by Sean Hannity as Carrie Underwood is to the Grammys; not smarter than, nor even remotely as smart as, a fifth grader) and Kid Rock (former 2nd place runner up to Pamela Anderson's standards; best known for whatever the hell he does; pretty much what most people who don't live in America think of when they think of America, hence all the resistance to being invaded) somehow makes both of the worse. It's like having a stupid blonde tumor on your brain, only to find you've developed a stupider, blonder, 15-year-younger tumor right on top of it.

And sure, it makes it easier on us, since we don't have to write about them separately, but that's like saying it's easier to explain to that orphan why you accidentally killed his puppy (and only companion in the world) and not-as-accidentally now have to knock down his orphanage to build a condo for wealthy families (dog friendly) in the same form letter from your secretary. Either way, it's still going to make our veal taste a little less tender.

*They broke up because of Twitter, people. Twitter! A website where people just say whatever the fuck comes to mind for no particular reason was more compelling to John Mayer than was Jennifer Aniston. Poetry.

204) Reverse Racism

2009-06-30T09:52:00.004-04:00

Not the thing - which isn't even a thing at all - but rather the term, which (par for the course for our widespread cultural affliction for needless noun-qualifying) is actually pretty racist, since it inadvertently carries on the sad history of white people assuming that being white is the "default" or "normal" state of affairs, and thus that racism must be directed towards non-white people, and thus racism directed toward non-non-white people is the "reverse" (and actually what they mean to say incorrectly is "inverse") of racism, when, in fact, the reverse of racism is not be an elitist with an unearned entitlement complex (or, to put it another way, a racist).

This is "reverse racism":

Also, reverse sexism:

Reverse homophobia:

Reverse non-sham marriageism:

Reverse democratically elected leaderism:

Reverse journalism:

Reverse anti-Gokeyism:

(in case it wasn't clear, what you should be taking away from this post is that white people are totes awesome)

Obligatory Michael Jackson Post

2009-06-26T11:28:00.004-04:00

By the time I was in kindergarten, I had Michael Jackson "Thriller" gloves. I even remember the little tag, with MJ in soft focus lying against a black background looking all sexy and badass. They were for kids, of course, so basically they were just nondescript white gloves, except, unlike other white gloves, they were endorsed by Michael Jackson, and were therefore awesome.

In fourth grade, my class had a one-page homework assignment: If you could meet anybody in the world, who would it be? After the third straight essay about Michael Jackson, our teacher asked us if anybody didn't write theirs about Michael Jackson. Four kids raised their hands. One of those four had written about Michael J. Fox, no doubt after a long, painful deliberation on who would be edged out for the honor.

For the first 13 years of my life, Michael Jackson was the be all and end all of fame. When Macaulay Culkin, the most famous kid on Earth, teamed up with Michael Jackson for the "Black or White" video, it was like the second coming of Jesus for anybody below the age of sixteen. It's not to say I, or anyone else, was obsessed with Michael Jackson, because that would be like saying someone was obsessed with water or shelter. It would be illogical, impossible to have an obsession with something so ubiquitous and superhuman. Michael Jackson was just everpresent. You didn't want to be him. You just wanted to know him. You wanted him to rule the world. You wanted him everywhere. Every kid in America wanted to take choreographed walks down the halls of every school in America accompanied by "Beat It" or "Billie Jean".

Michael Jackson was spoken about in the same conversations as Superman, Luke Skywalker, and Knight Rider. He was as cool and as all of them and broke the barriers of reality with as much ease. Except Michael challenged the imagination in a much more tantalizing way, because we knew he, unlike Superman, was real. When I would play as Michael in the "Moonwalker" arcade game and got to shoot lightning out of Michael's hands or turn Michael into a superhero armored robot fighting machine, nothing about this struck me or anybody else as unreasonable. In our minds, Michael Jackson could shoot lightning out his hands as easily as he could dance on stars, move planets with his hands, or walk on the moon.

And as such, the truth is that Michael Jackson didn't really die last night. Yes, the heart of the man he became may have stopped beating. And that man may have not been recognizable as the walking, talking, living embodiment of raw, unfiltered electricity we all loved. And still the person he became makes a certain kind of sense: nobody can defy humanity and reality the way Michael Jackson did for so long and to such lengths forever and really expect to land on his feet after the fall (ask Gollum). And yes, we should be saddened by his fate and his early death.

But the man behind the greatest music videos of all time, a man without precedent, unequaled in his or any other time and a permanent and inexorable part of the fabric of an entire generation, an entire era, the entirety of popular culture, and the landscape of music itself; that man will live forever.

He was larger than life, larger than his own tragic fall, and he will surely be much, much larger than death.

Michael Jackson is survived by Marty McFly, Punky Brewster, ALF, and Swatch watches.

203) Packaged Bagels

2009-06-19T09:18:00.004-04:00

Those of us who live in New York have all, at one time or another, gone through the harrowing ordeal of some person we know being like, "Who wants bagels?", only to reply, "Yeah, awesome. I'll have a bagel. Bagels. Delicious!" And that's when it happens: the person in question goes to his or her fridge, the temperature in the room drops with a cold, damp chill, and your will to live briefly though nightmarishly subsides as the horrific taste of chewy, bready non-bagelness slowly but unceasingly floods even the as-yet-unexplored corners of your mouth.

Newsflash: bagels aren't really very good for you.

They are, however, ostensibly awesome.

But here's the hitch: bagels aren't intrinsically awesome

So, in other words, if you just make something that qualifies as a bagel, this does not guarantee its awesomeness. A bagel's value is directly related to the context in which it is presented. So, for instance, if the bagel was made within, say, 6 hours of consumption and within, say, 5 miles of Manhattan, then there is about a 93% certainty of awesomeness, which trumps the 100% certainty of not really good for youness.

The stark truth, however, is that there is no middle ground. A bagel that only adheres to one of the two criteria above yields a much lower probability of awesomeness, and one that adheres to neither ensures a shocking 0% percent awesomeness rate and only ever can be judged on a scale of edible-at-bestness.

202) Artie Lange

2009-06-17T08:22:00.004-04:00

The obnoxious coke-head fat guy routine has been done already, and done well, by the likes of comic talents like John Belushi and Chris Farley (though, to be fair, Farley's was the subtly different "awkward coke-head fat guy" routine). Which makes Artie Lange, who is not a comic but an actual obnoxious coke-head fat guy desperately hoping someone finds him funny, all the more deplorable.

Look, if you can sit in front of Joe Buck and say all the things that any sentient human being who has ever attempted to sit through a baseball game he has "called" would naturally want to say (almost as though you're merely reciting the inner monologue a person watching FOX's Saturday afternoon baseball), and, somehow, you end mustering not just sympathy for the guy, but an overwhelming desire for revenge beat-down at the hands of Paul Rudd and Jason Sudeikis, then you must be the least-likable human being on Earth.

It'd be like if you finally got a magical flying bicycle with rockets and laser attachments for Christmas, and that creepy fat guy who won't stop dropping by your house was like, "Yeah! Let's go kill us some puppies and Dumbledore with that baby! WHAT!" I dunno, man...the bicycle would lose a little shine. A little shine.

Now we know why Howard Stern hired him: one, it makes him look like a comic genius, and two, by some miracle it makes him more "likable".

A lot of amazing things happen in these videos, which is excruciatingly NSFW:
- Artie Lange says "I'm a Yankee fan" and "I'm from Jersey", and somehow has no idea just how much truth he is telling in those two statements
- Joe Buck evokes sympathy (see above) and actually says some pretty awesome, nasty shit
- The above counts, like, 78 times, so that qualifies as a lot

Enjoy (?)

The Daily Hated

31) Christian Mingle

Whitney Houston,151,599 others die on tragic, absolutely usual Saturday

30) Origin Stories

29) People who refer to anything other than porn as "porn"

The Daily Hated SuperPac

Jim Morrison will still be guilty of having been a dreadful human being

Most interesting thing that could possibly happen on worst game show of all time happens

It's a f*%ing horse, people.

"Awful People Do Incredibly Unnecessary, Stupid Thing; Think You Should, Too"

Yankees fans giving Yankees fans a bad name. Again.

Pandas aren't that cool*

McDonald's might not be that healthy

Carl Paladino is a good (hu)man

I like it in the mouth of a knife-wielding stranger in a dark back alley in the middle of the night.

"GLEE > The Beatles!", types man currently forcing blunt instrument through own skull

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's an overly-stylized, existential, joyless Superman movie!

TDH's Religion Survey

"The Office" without Michael Scott is like...(#1)

Nation gets all uptight about two non-controversies, both somehow involving Elmo (Good job, Nation)

Well played, Joaquin Phoenix. Well played.

Terrible actress nonetheless possesses savant-like mastery of dramatic irony

Worst thing about the 21st century joins forces with the worst thing about 1996.

TDH's "Glee" Preview! (It's a "Glee-view"!!!!!)!!!!!!! (!!!!!)

Christine O'Donnell might not be 100% non-crazy

MTV still gives out awards, I guess

Stupid people: "Science is jerks!" :(

Video games have actually changed slightly since, oh, the late 1970s

ABC still unclear on meaning of word "star"

The 1st Amendment is probably first for a reason, maybe.

Wearing a t-shirt that expresses your irrelevant opinions about popular culture does not make you a member of any team/teams.

Tapes. Yep: Tapes.

Here's To A Peeance, Freeance Iraq!

TDH Presents "Traditional Marriage and Proposition 8: A Fable"

Diaper Wars: Huggies fires the devastating pedophilia missile.

David Cross on the Health Care Yellings

Words and Phrases We Hope Die Soon: Volume 1

Most Succesful Gay Porn of All Time to Get Sequel, For Some Reason

Apparently Famous Person of the Moment: Selena Gomez

Report: Vienna accuses Jake of being blah blah zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Radar Online might as well change its name to melgibsonisapsycopath.com

We Love Losers: Alabama Gubernatorial Race Edition

English people named Tony need to shut up...

Sarah Palin Logic: Racism Edition

Some things deserve actual words. Eulogies are among them.

Mel Gibson cares about traditional family values

File under "Terrible Stuff ESPN Does"

A notice about the new TDH

28) FIFA

27) Babies: The Movie

26) Sandra Bullock's (________)

25) Patchouli

24) Lady Gaga

23) Movie Scientists in Lab Coats

22) Tiger Woods, I guess

21) Starbucks Sizes

20) Family Feud

19) People Who Miss The Point Of Headphones

18) Overly Presumptuous Signs

17) Uh...Whatever *This* Is.

16) "Everybody Loves A ____ ____" T-Shirts

15) Saying "May or May Not"

14) Whoever Is Responsible For NBC's Schedule

13) "Remember Me" Reviews

12) The Term "Visually Stunning"

11) Diesel

10) Coffee Commercials

9) Jenny McCarthy

8) Teabaggers

7) Kate Episodes

6) The Term "Foodie"

5) Jersey Shore

4) Using The "Requiem For A Dream" Theme For Absolutely F*&%ing Everything

3) Scott Brown

2) Inside Edition

1*) Kansas

225) Kay Jewelers Commercials

224) Anthropomorphic Food

223) The Jay Leno Show

222) Jeff Dunham

17) Uh...Whatever This Is.

16) "Everybody Loves A " T-Shirts