15 Overrated Things

Note: Just because the things are on this list doesn't mean they suck. It means they are overrated. Also, they are in no real particular order.


I. Obama Sure, Obama is great right? I mean whenever we got to practice democracy, which apparently means picking between two dudes, he definitely came out on top.

Not Pictured: Journalistic Integrity

But the way people talk about him is a bit overblown, whether by his supporters or his critics. I mean, on one hand, he is only a politician, one who hardly showed up to vote, is able to speak for a very long time without saying anything, and, for chrissake, he appointed the useless H-Ton as his secretary of state. On the other, this dude has hardly started off as strong as what I would hope from the next Hitler, nor has he restarted sacrifices in Israel while performing miracles, so not much of an Anti-Christ either. Seriously. Let's just get off this guys dick.

II. Monopoly Monopoly is so boring it makes me unable to write a good analogy. It isn't fun. It isn't cool. It takes at least twenty hours to actually finish a game. It is a game about collecting properties and paying taxes. Why do people keep playing this? Especially grandmas. I mean, in general, Board Games are bogus, but to them Monopoly is like a good analogy compared to the one at the beginning of this paragraph.

III. Charles Dickens Dear lord, reading this shit makes me wish I was playing monopoly. I mean, there are reasons that books don't typically follow an entire person's life from start to finish. The first chapter of David Copperfield is "I am Born." And not a single fucking magic trick. And with Great Expectations, this dude somehow made boring a book which involved an insane convict threatening a child, an old woman who never changes her clothing getting set on fire, and a main character named Pip. PIP! That is fucking hilarious.

Burn, Bitch. Burn.

The only good part of this hack's writing is the fact that his misuse of a talking Raven in his serial Barnaby Rudge led to a much more talented (and much more insane) Poe to write one of the greatest poems ever. Way to inspire excellence, Dick-ens. LOL!

IV. GTA4 See what I did there with the fours? This game blew major ass. The main character was difficult to relate to, the game mechanics were flawed in a way that made getting into cars, much less shooting while driving them, difficult, and above all the story, which is tauted as one of the BESTEREST STORIES EVA!!1!!!one!, actually was just mundane. Oh man, you came from another country and now you are going to make it to the top and get revenge and...snooze. I beat this game, because the city was beautiful and I am a glutton for punishment (I also beat Superman 64 and the newest Superman movie game, if that means anything to you) but this game was shit. Not the shit. Just shit.

V. Seinfield Now I apologize if you are dumb and like this show, but be sure to revise your opinions. Jerry Seinfield just is not funny. Neither is his show. Let's make a show about nothing! Let's have a crazy roomate and a girl who sucks at dancing and a jewish balding midget who yells when he gets excited. Woot. People pretend like this was the best thing on television while shows like MST3K and Dead Like Me get cancelled. Fuck Seinfield.

VI. U2 Listen to How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Listen to reviews. Be very, very confused.

VII. There Will Be Blood P.T. Anderson kicked ass with Punch-Drunk Love. I like things with a slow buildup, as long as eventually that comes to fruition. And by fruition I don't mean having the main character slip into madness, quote an obscure Senate hearing from the twenties which ends up becoming an internet meme, then murder an actor who wasn't even supposed to be playing the fucking preacher role that he butchered. also Spoiler Alert. I mean DDL kicked ass in that flick, but he was surrounded by shit, and the symbolism was a bit heavy. And this is coming from someone who doesn't get symbolism. Who thought that the Grapes of Wrath just really liked turtles. So yeah.

Wait, my greed hurt my son. Greed...son...i don't get it.

VIII. People Criticizing Dane Cook Constantly Is he funny? No. Is he as terrible as everyone says he is? Of course not. I mean some of his stuff is genuinely chuckle worthy. And if he stole it from Louis C.K., sorry, but come on. Louis C.K. wasn't using it. Louis C.K. sucks. And he looks like Joe (no offense Joe). And sure, he uses noises for punchlines, but I know lots of prominent local comedians who do that. And by prominent I mean I work with them. But if all you do is sit around listing the things you don't like.... nevermind.

IX. Richard Dawkins My descent, ascent, whatever-cent into atheistic thought was very much conducted by Richard Dawkins. He knows more about biology than anyone has any right to. Did you see how I used the word Meme up there? Did you know he invented it? When his works center around his area of expertise, he is mindblowingly awesome. When his works center around critiques of the Christian God, he is hilarious in that only-brits-can-be-this-dry sort of way. But when he starts saying that God can be disproven scientifically...*dismissive wank*. Of course, his followers are worse than the Goddamn'd Spaghetti Monster people, and that is where the overrating comes from. People pretty much lift him up as high as he lifts up Darwin (i mean honestly, does this dude get a dollar every time he says Darwinian? He used the term in The God Delusion like fifty-million times), and that is a bit too high in my book of what should be at what height. Nooch.

X. Abraham Lincoln That's right. I think Abraham Fucking Lincoln is overrated.

Ok...admittedly this picture is in poor taste.

Wanna know why? No? Then stop reading. If so, consider this: Lincoln is remembered as a key figure in Civil Rights legislation. He freed the slaves he freed the slaves and so on. But, although he is definitely a great symbol in civil rights, he really wasn't that great of an actual, ya know, person when it came to race relations. He said in the famed Lincoln-Douglas debates that he didn't think that there should ever be any equality between whites and blacks. In fact, he said this:

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social or political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion that I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position that the Negro should be denied everything.

Of course, it was a different time and all that, and I bet most people would probably have agreed with such sentiments. But that doesn't mean we should hold him in a higher regard than we ought. Additionally, the Emancipation Proclamation was a political move which simultaneously turned the Civil War, which up to that point had been a multi-faceted conflict, into one about slavery which insured that Europe stayed out, and also did jack shit. He freed all the slaves in the confederacy, which at that time was another country. This would be like Obama decreeing all Canadians have to stop wearing R-tarded hats.

XI. Superman Superman is like that kid that you used to play with, and whenever you were pretending to shot at eachother, he would always say something like, "Force-field" or "You Missed" or "That's My Danger Zone, Stop It," and ruin all the fun. No matter what you throw at Superman he wins. Hands down. His comics are just a series of events wherein criminals / Lex Luthor / Brainiac gets Kryptonite and it doesn't work. Even his death was a sham. And that's just the recent comics. His old stuff is even worse.

Superman has anti-hit music powers which he refused to use against Hanson. Asshole.

People still want to make movies about this guy and talk about how awesome all his old movies were and, ugh, it's just shit. In fact, if I can think of one strike against Batman, it's that he never drove his orphaned ass over to Metropolis and put a green cap in Supes ass.

XII. Beer Beer makes my tummy hurt.

XIII. William Shakespeare Honestly? This guy wrote a bunch of shit, supposedly. I am not going to go into the theories about who really wrote all his crap, because that's what it is: crap. It doesn't matter who made it, it still stinks. Shakespeare wrote a lot of plays which jerked off the king, he wrote in iambic pentameter and rhyme, and whenever he couldn't think of a good word to fit his "rigid structure" he just made one up. I mean people talk about Shakespeare like he is the end all be all when there are people like Poe, Elliot, and Cummings who wrote much better, much less predictable shit. His plays were whack too, mostly just vulgar things written in a very pretty way. I think the worst part though, and what qualifies him for this list, is his fans. These plays were written to be bawdy and funny, and the people who act them out today are such overactors. They draw out every syllable, make everything seem so ripe with meaning when really it has about as much depth as a Kevin Smith line. In fact...maybe in five hundred years people will look back at Kevin Smith's scripts and perform them in the same manner. Can you imagine the futuristic version of Patrick Stewart, wearing a gold embroidered store clerk shirt, saying, "Try not to suck....anyone's...COCK....in the parking lot."

XIV. Family Guy How funny is it to repeat things? Repeat things? Say them over and over again with a higher and higher tone? A higher tone? When you repeat things. Repeat them. Over and over, repeating? I used to be a huge fan until this show started to suck nards. It constantly throws back to itself, subverts being clever by being "shocking," and has become a maze of unrelated pop culture references, extremely awkward dialogue (not awkward in the cool The Office sense, awkward in the Hugh Grant stuttering sense), and extremely elaborate musical numbers which in some way sate Seth MacFarlane's ridiculous obsession with musical theater, which in itself is dreadful (sorry, gays.) People are constantly singing Family Guy's praises and, true, it does occasionally have very funny moments. But it has run it's course, and needs to be put down. Sometimes, I wonder if the show used to be funnier if I used to be dumber. It's hard to sleep those nights.

XV. Jesus The most overrated figure of all time. Again, let me clarify: this does not make him bad. I am sure that the original Jesus (ya know, if he existed) was probably a great guy. Probably said a lot of cool stuff, hung out with social outcasts, really shook up things around the religious folks. Anyone who is willing to kick ass in the temple and command others to turn the other cheek is either ballsy or insane. Probably both.

"I'll teach you to leave your deceptive fossils everywhere!"

However, it doesn't seem like being a great guy was good enough. People had to corrupt him. They took him from a meek Jew and turned him into a mighty savior, then into God himself. I can imagine the word spreading like wildfire across the desert and, as telephone games tend to go, snowballing into the gigantic myth which was penned a century after Jesus' death. The Holy Book associated with Jesus is the most stolen book on the planet, and is full of all kinds of silliness and bigotry, spread around some amazingly bloody stories and ridiculous poetry. He is used to fight poverty and progress, to stop fights and to spawn wars.
People turn Jesus into whatever they need. Ask a Catholic, Mormon, Baptist, and Pentecostal what they think of Jesus and you will get four radically different answers. People need something bigger than themselves to believe in, some huge hope for times of trouble and death. Something that will let us know that the world will be alright. And Jesus is that for so many people. And yet at the same time...

Who wins? Youtube.

...he is a fuel for ignorance and hate. People will resist progress just because they think Jesus told them not to.
In all honesty, joking aside, I imagine the bastardization of Jesus' image and message find an analogy in a more contemporary figure: Che Guevara. To oversimplify his message, Che was a fighter against capitalism. He thought it oppressed people and was bad. And yet, nowadays, his image is used to sell more graphic t's to college kids who know jack shit about him than anything else. His image is having the exact reverse effect he fought for. And I imagine the actual, non tainted Jesus, is probably in the same boat somewhere.
Ya know, wherever religious figures and communists can get a boat after they die.