Where Have The Headphones Gone?

If you’ve been on a bus/train/to the gym/grocery store/airport bathroom (no joke, man was in a stall blasting some show about rocks) ever, you’ve been apart of this. Someone listening to music/a podcast/ impeachment hearings/straight phone conversations/death threats/terror plots/screaming/by taking the speaker at the bottom of the phone and jamming it into their ear. Or just holding the phone by their side, and letting the tiny speaker blare into the openness. NOT ONE headphone in sight. Not a strand. Not a bud. Not a wireless. Nothing. Just their tiny speaker, blaring, and the open air. WHERE are the headphones of these people? What happened? Here are some reasons that HUMAN BEINGS who have PHONES (which is a more EXPENSIVE ITEM than headphones) could not have HEADPHONES.

1. Your Headphones Got Caught On A Child

   You’re a good person. You see trash on the ground? You pick it up. You see a woman in trouble? You yell from across the street, ‘Hey miss, are you okay?’ wait for a few seconds for her to respond to you, and when she doesn’t because she’s being beaten mercilessly in the head by a psychotic person wearing only a diaper, you continue on your way. You’re walking down the street one day, headphones in, and you come across a flaming building. People hanging out of the windows. Screaming and crying. You take your phone out to record the whole thing. Not for likes, but to let investigators know EXACTLY what was going on. As you’re doing the lord’s work, recording other people’s misfortunes, a child falls from the building, and crashes directly onto you. As you stand up, brush yourself off, you reach out to the child in need.

   ‘Hey kid! Are you okay?’

   ‘AGHHGHG! Ahhhhhh!’

   Waiting for a few seconds for an AUDIBLE response and not getting one, because this flaming child has just fallen from a window, you turn your phone to the fire kid writhing in pain on the ground. And this is when you notice that your headphone cords have been sliced in half by flaming kid arm.

   ‘No! I was listening to a four and a half hour podcast about fishing that for about three and half hours sidetracks to the hosts doing things like ‘Would You Rather?’ and ‘If A Tiger Attacked You What Would You Do?’ while EVERY ONCE IN AWHILE mentioning fishing! Noooooo!’

   Now what will you do? Hold a phone in your hand while finishing the last hour of ‘Fishing For Complaints’ through the tiny little speaker while others endure it as well? Although fire children burning through your headphone cord is a decent excuse, it’s still not enough. Buy another pair.

2. Your Thousand Dollar Phone Is The Only One That Didn’t Come With Headphones

   So you’ve bought/leased a new phone. You open the new phone, excited to use the same three apps that you did on the old one but now THIS PHONE has A FEW MORE FEATURES that you will NEVER USE.

   ‘Hey there’s a feature on here that tells me how to be rich!’

   ‘You use it?’

   ‘Not yet. Instagram!’

   You open the phone, expecting to find what you always find. A little book that says, ‘Hello, I am phone. If you’ve opened me and don’t know, you must be an idiot or a very smart baby. Here is what I do’ and HEADPHONES. You throw the little booklet aside, and realize, NO HEADPHONES. Not. One. How are you the ugly duckling? Why in the HELL did you not get headphones that are GUARANTEED to us all? Why is your phone the ONLY ONE that doesn’t have them? Do you go back to to the store and find out where they are?

   ‘I don’t have time to go all the way to the store! I want to listen to something RIGHT NOW!’

   That’s fine. Surely you have another pair of headphones from the dozens of sound playing devices you’ve operated over the years?

   ‘No, I don’t. I got scared of them and burned them all!’

   Well… why would you d…

   *A door is heard slamming. The faint noise of music playing through a phone speaker is heard.*

   … Well… there’s that…

3. Someone In Your Family Hung Themselves With Headphones

   So you come home after a long day at the office. The whole way up to your front door you’re thinking, ‘Man, I wanted to hang myself all day, but thank GOD I’m not home.’ You open the door, and boom! There’s your grandmother. Hanging from a pair of Beats headphones. Slippers falling off of her cold, dead feet. Note attached to her that says ‘I had these noise cancelling headphones on and I actually HEARD A NOISE that wasn’t the SICK beat I was listening to. I can’t go on in this world if even Dr. Dre, of rapper/producer/NWA member fame, can lie to me and the public like this. So I decided to cancel all noise! I can’t hear a thing now! P.S. Turn up the base. Love, GranMommy Mom Mom’

   After you untie your grandmother’s dead swinging body from a beam (which is really hard to do with the quality of the Beats by Dre headphones cord), screaming ‘No! GranMommy Mom Mom! But you didn’t even bake one last batch of cookies before you left us! WHY?!’ you decide that you can NEVER AGAIN use headphones. How can you wear something on your head that took the life of a loved one? You can’t. Understandable. What you also can’t do, is listen to anything publicly without them. This is the trade off. Just silent phone games from now on.

4. You Don’t Know Headphones Have Been Invented

   In 1910, you were a blacksmith. You had two pairs of clothes. One dressy, one slightly less dressy but still very dressy based on today’s standards. You ate beans out of a can and avoided being in photos because they’d ‘steal your soul.’ One day while re-shoeing a horse named ‘Pre World War,’ you slip and accidentally jam the shoe into PWW’s ass. ‘Pre World War’ kicks you in the head, sending you flying into a wall. You are rushed to the hospital and fall into a coma. There’s a mix up at the hospital, and instead of people thinking you’re in a coma, they believe you’re dead. You’re supposed to be taken to the morgue, but these men, who just mixed up a person in a coma with a DEAD guy, don’t want to take you ALL THE WAY to the morgue, so they toss you in a freezer and decide they’ll take you there tomorrow. Unfortunately for you, the room the freezer is in is thought to be haunted, and is cemented over. So there you are. In a freezer. Behind cement. 109 years go by, and then a contracting company buys the land the hospital is on to build condos.

   ‘All right, the contract is signed. Push these disgusting sick people into the street.’

   ‘What?! But we need time to move thes…’

   ‘No time! I want lobby furniture and a movie theatre that no one will ever use in an overpriced building NOW! Wrecking balls will be swinging through here in less than an hour. Hurry up!’

   People in wheel chairs are pushed into the street. Full hospital beds with patients in them attached to IVs are tossed out of windows to save time.

   ‘But I was just about to have my beef bro….. Whoa!’

   A wrecking ball is thrown into the side of the building, and the freezer you have been in for 109 years flies through the air, crashing hard into an alley. Your ice body rolls out, and for four days you lay there, thawing. You finally come to. Look at all these cars! What is all this noise?! The buildings! The people! You’re in… the future! You walk into the street in a hospital gown. You see everyone with these THINGS attached to their heads. What IS that?! Demons? Aliens? You try to stop someone, but nothing. Everyone is holding SOMETHING in their hands that is ATTACHED TO THEIR HEAD. Scared, alone, unaware why these monsters have attached themselves to people’s heads, you sit on the street, and wait to die.

5. You Lost Your Headphones

   If you lost ALL OF YOUR PANTS would you just walk around without pants?

   ‘Yeah these are boxer briefs. I lost my pants, okay? What do you want me to do? Buy MORE PANTS? No. BEST I can do is paint my leg.’

   Headphones are pants for your music. Your music/podcast/phone call/temple run game needs pants. They are the private parts of your phone, and they need to be covered up by SOMETHING. NOBODY needs to see/hear your phones music/podcast/phone call just swinging in the breeze. BUY more. STEAL more. MAKE more. But Jesus, get some headphones.

Twitter/Instagram @nathanmacintosh

Reasons Kanye Shouldn't perform in Canada-Ye

For the closing ceremonies of the Pan Am games in the city of Toronto, some brilliant human being had the great idea to book Kanye West. To perform. Not to just show up and say 'hello', he would ACTUALLY perform some of his huge songs to people who have heard of him. He would put on a huge show in front of people who have heard his music at parties and had a great time. That's disgusting. People DO NOT want this man to perform at the closing ceremonies, and I am one of them. Why should he perform there? Who made that ridiculous call!? Just. Terrible. Here are some reasons that Kanye should NOT close the Pan Am games. 

The Canadian Dollar Is LOW

Kanye West is a massive star. He has been making great music and giving us great entertainment for over ten years. He is paid very highly for this. Now he's supposed to make CANADIAN money? That's gross. NO ONE should be paid in Canadian money. No one. Not sure what he charges for shows, but let's say it's $300,000. He'll be paid that in CANADIAN, and when he goes home to his super mansion, that will be worth $231,000 American. $231,000! He'll go to buy his daughter a $70,000 dollar necklace, and realize that he doesn't have it. If he performs in Canada, he will be underpaid. Do we want ANYone to be underpaid? No. No we do not. 

He Doesn't Need To Go To Cold Places Anymore.

The man fought through winters in his life. Chicago is NOT messing around at all when it comes to winter. Chicago gets so cold that it actually freezes the entire state of Illinois, and makes Missouri cold. Canada is cold. Right now? Not cold, but MAN, Kanye doesn't need this. He could be on a beach, still thawing out from the winter of '96 in Chicago. Don't make this man, perform in a city of cold winters and people. Just. Don't. It's not fair. If anything, have him close out the PanAm games, but take them to Florida, or South America, or the Sun. Don't stay in cold Canada. Don't do this. 

He'll Have To Cross The Border

If Kanye closes the Pan Am games, he'll have to cross the Canadian border. THAT thing, is not the best. The border guards will look Kanye in the face, and say, 'What are you coming to Canada for?' And he will have to say, 'I'm Kanye West.' And they will say, 'Yes. But what brings you to Canada?' And he will have to say, 'I'm Kanye West. I rap. I do shows. I am Kanye West.' And they will say, 'Yes, we know all this, but what are you DOING here?' The Kanye will have to look in their eyes, look down in disbelief, think about how big you have to get before people understand why you travel, and then take a sip of espresso. Don't put this man through this. He doesn't need a border guard pushing him around. 

Toronto Can't Offer Kanye Anything To Do

'Kanye, welcome to our city! Notice that people will give you bad looks for no reason at all. But hey, no worries! We have plenty of things for you to do. You can go to Dundas Square! It's like Times Square but worse. You can go to High Park! It's a... park... thing, way over there. You can go to the CN Tower. Ooooooo. It's tall, man! We have Queen St, where you can buy clothes that you wore five years ago but only now do people here think they're cool. Yonge st! It's the longest street in the world! The downtown part of it is pretty cool, there's a big MALL on it, and if you keep walking just a little bit, it turns into a weird porn store fiasco where you can get clothes for strippers and prostitutes. But THEN, it gets good again! And then bad again. It's really long!'

Kanye can go to the Canary Islands and have margaritas shipped in from the Virgin Islands. He doesn't need to be at these PanAm games. 

If Kanye Is Performing In Canada For People That Don't Even Want Him, He Won't Be Making New Music

While Kanye is in Toronto, performing to people who are yelling, 'I signed a petition for you not to be here! I wanted Rush!', he could be in the studio making more of the great music that he makes.  He could be in a studio making music for people who actually want it, not performing to people from the woods who would rather here Kim Mitchell. Might as well go to the studio, Kanye. Nobody yells at you to leave, and people who like what you do might cry. 

Twitter @nathanmacintosh

Rick Ross.

Look, this does not matter. We decided years ago that it wasn't important or useful information at all that a man who was once a correctional officer started rapping and telling the world that he was a drug kingpin. He sold drugs from the port of Miami. He would murder you and yours if you tried to stop him, and, at times, he barely rapped well about it. We decided at the time that this came out that we didn't care. That his beats were still sick, that when he did rap well it was cool, and who cares if he used to literally work with and in a system that he raps about being against. It's a crazy interesting story.

Chris Rock made a movie about this EXACT THING years ago. Early 90's, the movie CB4 was this exact story. A criminal with a crazy rap sheet goes to jail, and a group of rappers start rapping his story and become huge. The only difference in the movie really is that the rappers were not working for a prison. They were just kids. This was a movie, and it basically happened. It must have been some of the thought behind Rozay turning to rap. 

'Hey, they did it in that movie I saw once. I'm in!'

Now, the part that I do appreciate, is the wrestling aspect of the whole thing. Rap is full of people making up stories for our benefit. They tell us they have money and women, cars and guns, because it entertains us. We listen and love it. SOME people won't do that or like it, but by and large, people like to be entertained by the thought of a person doing all this stuff. The idea that an officer would go 'wait a minute. I could keep watching these criminals, put my life at risk, OR, rap about BEING a criminal, make a BAJILLION dollars and live WAY better than I can in this system. I'm in!' That aspect of it, it's great. People want to be entertained, entertain em! Make money! Nobody gets hurt! 

Except for the fact that he's not making up a story. He has completely TAKEN a story from an ACTUAL drug kingpin. A REAL human being who almost spent his entire life in prison doing the things that this other man is rapping about. And the reason that is nuts, is that you can be rewarded for SAYING THAT YOU DO ILLEGAL THINGS but you go STRAIGHT to a maximum security prison for actually doing them. That's crazy! That part of it is hard to fully understand. 

'You are going away for life.'

'Look, I know I sold drugs, but just about every rapper is saying it's cool to sell drugs. That have mansions and money from doing exactly what I did. I'm going to jail because you heard me on the phone say I'm going to push that dope. There is a song called Push That Dope! No jail time for that?"

"Different thing. They did it to a beat. SICK beat. You had no beat. Life in prison.'

Like, you can GO TO JAIL for talking about drugs over a phone. If someone is recording you talking about selling co-ca-een, you could be TOAST. But, if you rhyme it, if you put a beat to it, you could make enough money to buy a sports team. It's. Just. Incredible. 

This has been talked about for years, and forgotten about for years, But the actual Rick Ross, does not have millions of dollars now. What he did was never cool with society. What he did didn't make him a tourable act who has kids buying everything he says. But what he did, is what the other man is SAYING he did, and it's cool. Not only cool, we cheer it on. But the real Rick Ross, and others like him, we want thrown in jail, forgotten about by time and lost in a pit of hell. 'How can you sell drugs? That's insane. Don't you know that it destroys communities? Don't you know that KIDS could be doing drugs? For shame. Ohhhh, THANK you, Rozay. Rapping about drugs. Great. That's great. Gives kids something to look towards. Be a hero and a millionaire like you for talking about it. My kid loves you. Hell, I love you! That one song, with the beat and the drug hook? SIIIIIICCCKK. Thanks for turning the real Rick Ross's story into something positive. It's great to see. You're a pioneer.'

Is it not a little strange that you go to jail for selling drugs but you are paid ROYALLY for rapping that you sell them? Yes, selling drugs in illegal. Rapping about doing it isn't. But, isn't that just weird? Isn't it a strange thing that we are supposed to love the people who tell us to sell drugs but bury the people who do under concrete? It's just... strange. One is a hero. The other is a villain. One is an amazing look at what is possible in America. The other is an amazing look at reality. 

Best part is, if the Real Rick Ross could rap, people wouldn't like it. If he guy could rap, people would STILL not like him as much, because he'd be saying that he USED to sell drugs. 

'Wait a minute. This beat is sick, this guy can flow, but did he say that he wishes he had never started pushing drugs? Wishes that he didn't move weight? Turn this shit off! Yes! There we go! A guy who's never sold drugs rapping about moving TONS of it! Thank you, DJ! Thank YOOOOOUUUUU!'

Again, this doesn't matter. It's just interesting. Don't sell drugs. You could go to jail. But glorify drugs to a beat, so that maybe other people will sell them, and you sir, are the best.  Rick Ross and Hacksaw Jim Duggan are the same in that they both showed us that their business's were not as real as we had thought before. Duggan's story was his at least. 

Twitter @nathanmacintosh