A Letter to Latin

Dear Latin,

You think you’re really fucking funny, don’t you? It’s hilarious to have fourteen different words for the verb “go” isn’t it? I bet you think you’re smart too. Because apparently having five different declensions, three genders, seven noun cases, four verb conjugations, six tenses, six persons, three moods, two voices and two aspects makes a language really scholarly. I’m sure you think you’re hot shit because Ceasar spoke your language. Well, guess what? Ceasar was brutally murdered by his best friend. Latin, I fantasize about hitting you over the head with a baseball bat and watch the blood ooze out of your cracked skull. I think about pulling your fingernails out one by one, watching you scream out in pain over and over and over again and I laugh. If Doc Brown pulled up in his Delorean and told me to hop in I would set that puppy to 300 B.C. and murder your pregnant mother so you would never see the light of day. You see what you’ve reduced me to, Latin? A borderline psychopath with homicidal tendencies. You think you’re the mother of all languages? You make me sick. You make me want to move to Germany so I could speak a language that has nothing to do with you, and I’m Jewish, so that’s a pretty high order of hatred- making a Jew want to move to Germany. The only pleasure I get from your existence is that you’re dead. Yeah. You’re dead. You can think you’re smart and funny and cool but the truth is- nobody speaks you anymore except for Catholics, and guess what? Nobody really likes Catholics. So, Latin, I guess my point is- you’re not funny, rot in hell.

Love,
Kate Shapiro

Five Awesome Things To Do At Bars

Have you ever gone to a bar and went, well this is boring. Yeah, me too. But I got over it, mainly by adhering to these five great activities to do at bars. Here are five things to do at bars to assure that you have the most exciting Sunday at 3:00 AM ever!

1. Convince a fully grown adult to do a jagerbomb. Usually, after college the jagerbomb falls to the wayside. A shot of Jager and some Red Bull? That is the unsophisticated sort of drinking done by frat boys and scantily-clad women at some Lacrosse party at Duke. That is the unsophisticated sort of drinking that is followed by a stripper gang-rape scenario that makes your Gender Studies class like totally awkward for the next four months. Thank you very much, but I'll take my white wine spritzer instead. It's hard to convince a hard-working professional to do a jagerbomb but it is possible. Step One: Make sure they are already sort of drunk (white wine spritzer number four) Step Two: Engage them in some sort of witty banter. Maybe make a joke, or a fake reference ("Did you see that man over there do a jagerbomb? Classy, huh, right? HAH.") Step Three: Challenge them ("You should do a jagerbomb. IRONIC, right? It would be so hilarious.") If this doesn't work, which it will, because fully grown adults love irony then you can resort to Plan B. Which maybe should be your Plan A solely for the comedy. Plan B: If they still won't do the jagerbomb then you say "Okay, fine, lets see what the rest of the bar thinks." Then you go around and take a poll of the entire bar on whether this person should do a jagerbomb. Rally everyone together, and publicly shame them into doing the jagerbomb. Either way, that jagerbomb is going to be drunk and it's going to be entertaining.

2. Play a Drinking Game With That Drunk Guy Asleep In The Corner. Ah, drunk guy asleep in the corner. You are there, day and night, lurking, half asleep in the corner. You try to stay awake, but you just drank too damn much. Your appearance might change but there you are, slumped in a chair, surrounded by your friends, your friends who have forgotten you. I haven't forgotten you, drunk guy. I haven't forgotten you. So, you and a friend sit near the Sleeping Drunk Guy, but not too close. Sit at least five feet away. Train your eyes on him. Under no circumstances should you look away. Every time his eyes flutter open or he twitches a bit to the side, take a drink. There are two warnings about this game though. 1, Sleepy Drunk Guy may completely lose consciousness so the game could get boring fast. 2, Sleepy Drunk Guy may completely gain consciousness and catch on the game and get mad at you for using his current sloppy state as entertainment. Things might get belligerent fast.If all goes well though, you'll be drunk and giggling the entire night.

3. Find a French guy. He's allusive but he's there. Just look for a thin mustache, a cardigan and an air of pretension. Tell him to "Speak France." If he does, buy him a shot, if he doesn't, he's a dick, so start berating him with questions about France. ("Do they have houses in France? What about paved roads? Is there electricity? Why do French people smell so funny? Do they smell funny in France? Who is King of France these days anyway? What do they call French Fries in France? Do they call them Freedom Fries? That's what we call them in America. How accurate was the movie Moulin Rouge?") This can work for any foreign country actually, and most regions of America too.

4. Get People To Make Out. Hey! You! Come on! Make out! It'll be fun! Yeah! HEY-O! It's easy to get people to make out. Mainly because everybody wants to make out. Especially when they're drunk. What is great about drunk people is that they will make out with basically anybody. No man, woman, child or dog is off-limits to the drunk person. This activity has a 100% success rate. It may take some time but they will make-out and it will be epic. And usually disgusting! What you do is find a group of friends. A herd is best, congregated in a corner, huddled over empty beer bottles. Go over to them and find one person. Become friends with them. Ask them about their life. Ingratiate yourselves to them. Form a camaraderie. Migrate to an adjacent group of people with completely different characteristics. Maybe the person you found was a young hipster chick, and you walk over to some slightly overweight bros, or some late 30s aging businessmen, or really drunk Asians. The possibilities are endless. Then just point blank ask them to make out. Just go for it. They'll appreciate your directness. They want to make out. They totally already do. You're just a catalyst. Hey, maybe they'll get married and love each other forever. Or maybe it'll just be a lone hook up with maybe a boob grab. Either way, it will be hilarious. Also, funniest hook-ups: people in the army.

5. Most likely there is a TV with some sort of sports game. There will be one avid sports fan. At least one. Probably a group. Every sports team has a rivalry, right? Find out what that rivalry is and milk it. Say there is a Yankees/Red Sox game on and you are in New York City. Start talking about the Red Sox as if you had no idea they were Yankees fans. You don't even have to know much about sports. In fact, it's better that you go about this with an air of ignorance. "Wow, the Red Sox are pretty good this year, aren't they? Who pitches for them? Either way they're pretty good. I think they'll go to the World Series. Probably win it too. What a great franchise." The sports fan is already annoyed with you at this point but he won't push you away. He will try to correct you. The sports fan will always try to correct your world view. Keep feigning ignorance, you can even say "This isn't a Red Sox bar?" The great thing about sports fans is this: they just want to fight with you. Fighting with sports fans is fun because they get completely worked up over sports. Sports! They're not even playing the sports! Yet, they will still come to blows over said sports. I have once watched nine Phillies fans beat the shit out of a guy in a Yankees shirt. Most likely, these sports fans won't punch you, but they might. If they do: Run. Or fight back. If you're a girl you can just show them your boobs and you're back in their good graces. It's up to you. Either way it will be one memorable night.**

You may read this and say: "Kate, why are you using other people for your own entertainment." Because drunk people want to be used. They want to be used by other drunk people for entertainment purposes. And that is beautiful. It is beautiful that we can all come together on a Friday or Saturday night (or a Tuesday afternoon) and let loose are inhibitions! It's a testament to human beings that we can be so comfortable with other people. Drunk. At bars.

**By the way, Phillies fans are the best fans ever. They just want to fight each other, vomit on the field, get tased for running onto the field, and drink a lot in the daytime.

I Hate Fox & Friends

I hate Fox & Friends. It is incredible how much I hate Fox & Friends. I don't think it's possible to hate anything as much as I hate Fox & Friends. Except, maybe Nazis. For Me it is 1. Nazis 2. Fox & Friends 3. Dave Matthews Band. I hate those things. But this is not about Dave Matthews Band or Nazis. This is about Fox & Friends.

For the last month twice a week I have been assigned to watch Fox & Friends for Gawker TV and each week I gain a new and unique reason to absolutely hate this show. I would like to begin by saying I don't hate Fox & Friends because it is a morning show on Fox News and, therefore, it is conservative. No. I hate Fox & Friends because they're boring.

This is the overall structure of Fox & Friends: Report vague worldwide stories: (Hurricane in the Phillipines. Chilean Miners. A policeman asleep on the job in Oklahoma. Five year-old girl says "How Being In Jail Is Like Being In Limbo") then they have a pow-wow about how liberals suck. Except, it's not an interesting pow-wow, it's usually that skeletor-looking blonde woman making a bitchy sounding claim and the old guy going"Gretchen, don't you think you're taking this a little too seriously?" to which she screeches at him "Noooooooo, Steve, this is DESTROYING America, DESTROYING it." and he then goes "Gretchen, calm down, it's just Stephen Colbert, he's just a comedian." and then the other guy chimes in "Yeah, Gretchen, seriously. Healthcare is destroying America not Stephen Colbert" and she screeches more ("NO NO NO NO NO NO NO") and then they cut to commercial. Even this description is exaggerating how entertaining this show is. Imagine what I just described in the least entertaining way possible and that is what this show is.

Then they talk about politics, which is the really sad part of this newscast, because it's usually segments like "Are Women The New Swing Vote?" where they try really, really, really hard to say women actually do relate to Sarah Palin or Christine O'Donnell. Except they have no proof of this, it's three obscure pundits like "Woman on Atlanta Public Access Early Morning Talk Show" talking about their opinions and maybe, maybe, a poll with no citation whatsoever to any real polltaker. Then they play a tenuous bass line on top of these segments which makes human beings' feel disoriented and discombobulated and probably hypnotizes cats.

So this goes on for an hour except they replace "Are Women The New Swing Vote?" with "Mexican Assassins Sent Into Arizona To Kill?" and sometimes they change the various vague world news pieces but mainly they just report on the same news over and over for FOUR hours. Replaying the same news bits and the same tenuous bass line and all the dumb pow-wows.

At least Glenn Beck squirts blood out of his eye and spouts utter nonsense for an hour on his show. At least Bill O'Reilly screams a lot at people on his show. I like that more than three hours of the most boring news around punctuated with forgettable hosts and "um ah so yeah it's not raining in Kansas today!"

Fuck You, Fox & Friends. Fuck you.

People Need To Stop Taking Social Media So Seriously

Wow! Look! You can comment on each other's pictures on the internet! How crazy! Tweets! Facebook! Blogs! Holy shit, another social networking device so I can tweet, facebook and blog at the same time! I don't understand what the big deal about social media is about.

Once I had to sit through an hour and a half lecture on the merits of social media and how to effectively social network. It was seriously a dude talking about how to make your tweets look nice for an hour and a half. AN HOUR AND A HALF. I'm never going to get that hour and a half of my life back. I could have been feeding the homeless. Or making money, I could be spending money. Hell, I could be doing anything and it would have been more stimulating than that hour and a half talking about how neat twitter is. Then I go to parties and bars and I ask what someone does and they say "Oh, I'm in social media." What does that even mean? Is twitter and facebook that much of a mystery that companies have to hire other people to do them for it. These self-proclaimed social media whiz kids. Is it really that much of an accomplishment that you are capable of using the internet? I'm sorry, not the internet, facebook. I think the internet has strayed from it's original purpose- illegally downloading and porn.

Let's talk about the internet for the second. I love the internet. The internet has saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years by essentially replacing human beings. I can check the news, sports scores, research my Philosophy paper, get cliff notes, chat with my friends, watch TV but mainly the internet is important for one thing and one thing only. Looking at fucked up shit. Yep. Fucked up shit. I could spend five minutes looking at facebook at some viral marketing scheme the social media experts have cooked up or I can read a first person account of how a man had sex with a dolphin. Don't get up on your moral high horses and tell me you never once google image searched "weird boobs." That's what the internet is really about. When people ask me what I do for a living I'm going to say I'm an expert at looking at fucked up shit on the internet. Another great thing about the internet is that it is full of things that would normally cost money but are now free! Yippee! The internet is a great place and it could be greater if it wasn't burdened by all these social media sites. Let's talk about a few of them and how to make them better.

Foursquare- What the fuck kind of program is this? Why would I want to check in to every place I go? What do I get out of that? I don't care where other people go and why would people care where I go? Oh, Kate Shapiro's at CVS Pharmacy. How riveting. Bah. Then in order to create incentive you can be the mayor of a place. Guess what you get for being the mayor of a place? That's right. Nothing.

The way to improve Foursquare: The only way this can be good if people really start divulging personal details "Kate Shapiro was at Planned Parenthood." Ooh! What was Kate Shapiro doing at planned parenthood? Did she get an abortion? Does she have syphilis! I bet she has syphilis! That's the kind of social media I can appreciate, the kind that really infringes on your privacy. Bringing the fucked up-ness of the internet to social media.

Microsoft Tag: Why should I take a picture of a symbol with my phone, process it in an App, just so Best Buy can tell me I can save 10% on the Blu Ray release of the latest Kristin Bell movie. Just use English. This is marketing at it's absolute worst.

How to Improve Microsoft Tag: Take a picture of the symbol, show it to your friend, say "Hey! Look at this, you might save 10% on that new Kristin Bell movie." They're like "Sure!" and then a series of pictures flash by the screen so fast it hypnotizes your friend into doing whatever you say.

So, hey, next time you hand me your business card with the words "Social Media Expert" on them I'll hand it back to you and say "Go back to party planning and living off your parents, twenty-five year-old white hipster."