Where is Channel 175?!

Okay, I'm back!

And what could possibly convince me to come back after a long hiatus? (I am of course excluding my brief return yesterday to write an uncharacteristically short post.) Well, we already established in an earlier post that it cannot possibly be because I have become any less lazy over the course of time. And just to prove this point, I am way too lazy to even go back to that previous post in which I mentioned that I had unequivocally not given up being lazy.

Well, to end the suspense, what has brought me back is rage. Yes, rage. You see, the other night, as in last night, I had used the remote control to turn on the television device sitting in my living room. And as I quite often do, I was using the remote control to navigate through the different channels, most of which of suck, to see whether there was anything worth watching currently airing.

And as usual, just about everything that was on television sucked, just as one might expect of generally sucky channels. And so I was left with my standby channel, one that rarely disappoints in situations such as this: The Boomerang Network.

For those who are unaware, the Boomerang Network is Cartoon Network's sister station that broadcasts cartoons from a bygone era when the creators of the programs cared about such quaint things as interesting plots, animation, good drawing, and humor. Now granted, not every one of the shows that the network chose to air possessed all of these qualities, but most of these shows certainly seem as if the creators (a) actually took more than twenty minutes to complete individual episodes of the show and (b) believed the children watching the show were more competent and attentive than trained monkeys.

But alas, I was thwarted. And why was I thwarted? Well, because in their infinite lack of wisdom, whoever it is that decides what channels I get in my cable subscription has decided to remove Channel 175 from my list. That (those) bastard(s)! I will have my revenge! I have not completely formulated the revenge plan as of yet, but rest assured, it is being formulated. I'll have more later (unless they wise up and bring back Channel 175).

The rage is back!

Where is Lou?

Lou Pearlman is on the lam, folks, and someone needs to do something about this. For those unaware, it has recently come to light that Pearlman, through some sort of elaborate scheme (the details of which I do not wish to elaborate on here), successfully bilked some 1400 people (many being senior citizens) out of an exorbitant sum of money. In this case, "exorbitant sum of money" means $317 million. Additionally, it seems that he was successful in stealing $150 million from banks. It is obviously highly unfortunate that such a con artist was able ruin so many people. Just adding the two totals listed earlier that he accumulated through his scams, we are looking at $467 million. However, I argue that this total severely underestimates how much he has swindled innocent people.

If you have read the linked article (or at least part of it), you are aware that Pearlman is responsible for the creation of such groups as the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync. I truly don't believe we should overlook the damage that Pearlman did by introducing these atrocious acts to the US in particular, but the world in general. Let's face it, folks: these groups, and their cousin boy band groups, were horrendous. It is very comforting that at this point they seem like things of the past and will hopefully never again rise to prominence. Of course hindsight is 20/20, and there is likely a tiny minority who would defend these altogether weak groups as true musical talents, but there were people (including myself) calling these groups the hacks that they were during their heydays. So I think that it is completely legitimate to add to that $467 million that amount that Pearlman bilked out of consumers who wasted their money buying albums created by these hacks.

Some estimates suggest that the Backstreet Boys have sold somewhere on the order of 90 million albums. Let's play a game. We'll use what I think is a conservative estimate and say that those albums cost $5 each. Well, $5 multiplied by 90 million equals $450 million. That's nearly as much money as Pearlman cheated out of those 1400 people and those banks combined. (Here, of course, I use "nearly" in relative terms. A sum of $17 million is after all rather large.) Now, I can't find totals for 'N Sync record sales, but sadly, I believe the total was not insignificant (meaning that the total was more than zero). However, I failed to mention that Pearlman had a hand in the formation of other groups such as O-Town and LFO. This amount of evidence should already be enough, but I do believe I would be remiss if I did not point out that Pearlman is ultimately responsible for introducing the horror that is Aaron Carter. So please, let's not underestimate the damage that this man has done, which I contend that people are currently doing.