Rap Crap, part II

As I said in the last article, I came across a interesting website that (tries to) explain to us why Tupac is not rotting under the ground. Some of the allegations are incorrect in most cases, downright stupid, which makes me wonder how many times the author of such conspiracy thoery flunked 4th grade. Without further adue or attempts to make funny remarks based on the lack of intelligence of rap enthusiats, let's analize what these guys say.

"Most fans (over 83% in a recent survey) still hold on to the belief that Tupac Shakur may still be alive."

I'm pretty sure 98.5% of all children between 5 and 10 years old hold on to the belief that Santa Claus exists, and although that proves Santa is quite popular, it doesnt change the fact that he doesn't exist. Then again, everyone knows 56.8% of all statistics are made up.

"There are many suspicious details about his departure that contribute to this."

Many suspicious details indeed. Brace yourselves for the sheer amount of suspiciouness we'll examine:

First...

The uncontested facts:

After leaving the Tyson fight on Saturday September 7, 1996, Tupac was alledgedly shot 5 times. He lived through the shooting and was taken to a nearby hospital. He was pronounced dead on Friday September 13, 1996.

Ok. Now...

The suspicious facts:

Friday the 13th is a very suspicious day.

Wow! They got that right. Friday 13 is suspiciously similar to a series of crappy movies with the same suspicious name. Therefore, Tupac must be alive!

You just can't dispute the debate skills rap fans possess.

There were never any pictures released of Tupac in the hospital.

I never saw pictures of Elvis in a hospital either. Since every moment of every person's life is always thoroughly registered in film, the lack of evidence proving someone was in a hospital in some point in time is EVIDENTLY a proof that they never were in a hospital!

It gets better, fellows.

In the song "Life Goes On", Tupac raps about his own funeral.

Tupac must've had some sort of foresight into the future, being that no human being suspects that they will one day die.

The driver of the car in which Tupac was riding, Suge Knight (the executive producer of Death Row Records), didn't show up for questioning about the shooting.

Okey...

The video "I ain't Mad at Cha" was released only a few days after his death.

The production and release of an album is not directly envolved with the artist. That only proves rap fans do not understand how the music industry works (but then again, assuming rap fans understand anything about music would be a missconception).

"I ain't Mad at Cha" is track 13 on the album All Eyes On Me. The video shows Tupac as an angel in heaven. In the video, Tupac was shot after leaving a theater with a friend, which is very similar to how he was shot in real life.

You know, it's because of situations like this they invented the word "coincidence".

Interestingly, Tupac dies in his last video released under the name "2Pac". His new video "Toss It Up" from the new album was released under the name "Makaveli". The second video to be released by the name Makaveli is "To Live and Die in L.A." But how could they shoot the second video when he is "dead". Was the video really shot 4 months before his death, back in August of '96?

Yes, it was.

You know what's the difference between shooting videos is editing footage?

There is none. All it takes to make a video of a dead "artist" (and I'm using the term loosely here) is get some footage of the "artist" in question and superimpose the "music" (again, since I'm refering to rap, the term "music" is used irresponsably).

In the video "Hail Mary" released under the name Makaveli, there is a gravestone that says Makaveli. But the gravestone is cracked and there is a hole right in front of it, inferring that Makaveli rose from the dead.

I've seen a movie where a guy goes back in time, does that mean people can actually go back in time?

Please, Tupac fans, help me figure this out.

A shooting involving Snoop Doggy Dogg occured close to the release of his album Doggystyle. The shooting made Snoop appear more "real" and showed his fans that he really was a gangsta. The shooting gave him respect because everyone that bought his album believed what he was talking about. Within one week of its release, Doggystyle went platnium. Snoop was signed to the same label as Tupac which is Death Row Records.

I'm still trying to figure out what the hell that has to do with anything.

In December '96, Tupac's new album went platinum. In interviews prior to the shooting, Tupac talked about how he wanted to stop rapping and being a gangsta and get out of the limelight. What is the only way Tupac could completly escape the media spotlight ??? (Answer: if the public thought he was dead.)

EXACTLY, he could never quit, or go in a hiatus, or take a break, or vacations, or whatever. The only way the poor guy could have some rest is by faking his own death!

Tupac always wore a bulletproof vest, no matter where he went. Why did he remove it at a very public event like a Tyson fight?

Uh... because it was a PUBLIC event, which therefore decreases the chance of being assaulted?

In most of his songs he talks about being buried, so why was he allegedly cremated the day after he "died"? And since when do they cremate someone the day after death in a murder case?

You know, after you're dead, it's impressive the lack of input you get in the decision of what do to with your corpse.

Tupac studied Machiavelli in depth while in prision was a fan and had read his books several times. Perhaps Tupac is taking his advice.

Or perhaps he just took two to the chest and bit the dust.

Machiaveli wrote two books before his death. Look at what the All Eyez on Me disks are called.. Machiavelli's books were called, "Book 1," and, "Book 2." The CD's of, "All Eyez On Me," are entitled the same

Your point being...?

One of Machiavelli's books is, "Discourses Upon The First Ten Books Of Titus Livy," which it's claimed Tupac read in jail. In Book 2, Chapter XIII He says, "a prince who wishes to achieve great things must learn to decieve..." This is very similar to verses in some of Tupac's songs.

Your point being...???

Some say that Tupac modified the Machiavelli name because if you rearrange the letters, they spell, "Am Alive," or, "I Am Alive."

Now that makes perfect sense. The guy stages his own death to avoid the midia spotlight and attention, and then goes out of his way to give out clues that he is in fact alive.

Tupac's album All Eyes on Me was released on Feb.13, 1996. Tupac "died" on Sept.13, 1996. It is quite a coincidence that the two dates are exactly 7 months apart.

No, it's no coincidence. A coincidence is when two events that are not under human control happen in a way in which one can assert similarities between them. A album release is a human decision; someone can merely choose to release it in that day, therefore, rap fans are stupid.

Tupac officially died at 4:03 PM. 4+3 = 7 Also he "died" at an age of 25 years. 2+5 = 7. It seems as if seven is Tupac's number.

In this point rap supporters do simple mth questions in order to hide the fact that they are half-witted losers - in what they fail miserably.

There is nothing in the new album that says TUPAC RIP 1971-1996. Wouldn't it make sense to include something like that in the first album after his "death"?

Yes, maybe. But then again, that doesn't prove anything, does it?

And there you have it.

Rap Crap

According to some chick I saw on TV last night, Tupac Shakur's new CD just hit the shelves, to be bought by the seemingly avid rap consumers that just can't get enough of that "thang".

Let's take a moment to understand the implications of that sentence.

Tupac Shakur, shot dead in 1998, just released a new album. Not only that, but this is his SEVENTH, and I'll repeat that, SEVENTH venture in the phonographic business after his own death!

Now, I may be impartial to write something about rap, being that I lack the level of brain damage required to at least not hate it so much. Rap, hip hop and their by-products can be hardly even considered coherent productions that one would atribute to beings gifted with intelect, let alone be considered music.

Given the fact that I attend to Dass, the blackest school outside Nigeria, it's safe to say I've heard my share of hip hop "music" (and I use the term loosely here) for this lifetime and a couple next. And my feelings about the "style" are quite straightfoward. Imagine a dead hobo being ground into a fine powder and that powder being added to some week-old feces and the feces being ground into a powder and added to the remnants of the Pope's bathwater. After sitting in the sun for approximately three weeks, stewing in its own juices, the sensation experienced when eating this ball of disease would come somewhere close to approximating the pain caused by the rappers kids that undoubtly bring CD's from their personal collection to play throughout the classes.


Tupac, the most talented dead man in History
Many of them, if inquired about rap music, would allegate that it envolves a fair amount of talent. I gotta tell you, when a dead man can record and launch SEVEN CDs from the grave, each of which winning category awards, one should question the amount of "talent" envolved. There's not more talent envolved in rap than there is publicity and crappy sounds that can barely pass for audible material.

So, although rap is a sack of rotting cat vomit and wouldn't touch it with my dead grandmother's rotting arm, I still feel entitled to an opinion about Mr. Shakur's lastest album. So I ran an extensive research, and by "ran an extensive research" I really mean "replaced 'lesbian hardcore sex action with midgets' on the query bar on Google with 'shakur crappy new cd'".

As I found out - and as many of you might know -, some rap fans dwell on the illusion their lord and master, Tupac, is somehow magically impervious to 9mm bullets and didn't die that night in Vegas. These smart fellows firmly and trully believe that Tupac is alive and well somewhere, being all gangsta and doing things un-dead gangstas do such as record super smashing CDs.

The fact that these people believe their idol is still alive escapes my logic, possibly due to the fact it makes no sense, or that I really don't care. Nonetheless, I have a lotta free time in my hands and decided to conduct a study on this creed.

I copied excerpts of a certain "Tupac Fans #1 Resource for all things Tupac" website. My next article will explain the reasons why some people think this guy is still alive.

On a unrelated note, the Big Foot was seen around the Oshawa Centre. His PR guys said he didn't wanna give any interviews.

Dragon Crap Z

I just don’t get Dragonball Z. Despite being the smartest person in the entire planet and maybe in the closest ones, I am unable to comprehend how this show has stayed on the air for this long, how it has such a large army of adoring fans despite not making any sense whatsoever, and how the creators of the show are able to go out in public without having a wide assortment of heavy things thrown at them, like pianos or 747s.

The few times I’ve seen it, it appeared to consist mostly of strangely-proportioned anime characters with 400 pounds of muscle flying through the air throwing flashy colored balls at each other, each of which destroys an area the size of Mexico while somehow failing to harm the person it explodes next to, accompanied by dialogue primarily composed of exaggerated grunts and incoherent screams.

The storyline in Dragon Ball Z is probably the most predictable thing ever imagined by a human brain, besides the movie Titanic ("Wow, a movie about the Titanic, the most infamous shipwreck in human history. I wonder how this movie goes"):

There's the main character, someone named Goku. He's all tough and shit. Actually, not only tough and shit, he's the TOUGHEST in the universe. Althought he's supposed to be the most strong dude in the whole fuckin galaxy (hence making competition unfair to anyone who's not driving a armored assault vehicle) the creators pull the same crap every week: some stronger dude comes along and do something like killing the entire population of a planet, or blowing one up. That's how creative they are.

Where the stronger dude came from, considering Goku was "the stronger in the universe", I do not know.

That's the whole premise of Dragon Ball Z: Stronger dudes coming along. It's like high school all over again, except you couldn't fly in high school and there were no androids.

Oops, I forgot something: the stronger dude is always:

a) An alien
They are always bad guys.

b) A robot
They are always up to no good.

c) An alien robot
Wow, aren't we creative? Now that's something no one would expect: the mix of the most classical enemies in the series.

d) The son of one the characters, who came from, brace yourself for this one, THE FUTURE.
Hell, they already shoved aliens and robots down our throats. If they're going for non-sense, why not go all the way? In a show featuring green flying dudes who shoot purple balls of energy and super giant space mutant monkeys, time travel is one the least outrageous concepts.

And, of course, the classical "enemy-who-becomes-friend" plot twist. I mean, it's an interesting theme, when it doesn't happen like 40 times in the series. It becomes obvious, like the rest of show: if Goku is kicking someone's butt in today's episode, chances are he's gonna be having a milk shake with them in next week's episode. Then comes along an even stronger dude, which is an alien robot from Neptune, and try to kick their butts. He becomes their new milk shake buddy faster than you can say "Kamehameha!".

I have a theory that explain this weird fenomenom: notice that by now, Earth's population has been murdered and ressucitated like five times, so the bad guys are running out of people to kill. Having nothing else better to do, they decide to join to good guys to protect a planet which they know have immortal people. What's the point in killing people who keep coming back from their graves? I guess that's why 100% of all enemies who appeared in the show end up becoming good guys.

- Ah, fuck this shit. These earthlings just won't die. Let's play some videogames and wait for the next dumbass to show up, only to realize it's useless to fight against people who will keep coming back to life. Pass me that frozen yogurt.

Bad guys in the cartoon become good guys BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO. Hell, better that than getting a job in a cartoon company and creating a bad anime.

Notice that becoming a good guy for having nothing else better to do implies that there's probably no sex in the DBZ world. Who goes flying around and shooting colorful energy balls when they can have some good humping instead? I wouldn't.

That would explain why Goku never raped any chick. Police wouldn't be able to nail the bastard, what is he waiting for?

...

All that makes watching a DBZ episode as entertaining as driving rusty nails thru the ears of your own grandma.

Man, I hate that cartoon.

"If I were on a desert island, what three DVDs would you take with you and why?"

That was the title of my first english assingment. Mr. Whatever-His-Name-Is challenged the class to give an answer to the question that embodies the worst fears of our generation: being stranded on a desert island with no good movies to watch while you try to kill yourself with a sharp rock.

And since I've been suffering from a horrible case of writers block (either that or that burrito I had last night, I still can't decide), I'll just write my answer here.

A-hem.

The Matrix - Directed by the Wachowski Brothers, 1999

My first choice would be The Matrix. I can't deny it, I'm a fan boy. Saying that I kinda like The Matrix is like saying Hitler kinda didn't like jewish people. Although I must say, the reason why I love this movie goes beyond the wireframe kung fu fighting (that probably required more illegal chinese imigrants than all grocery stores in Ontario combined) and groundbreaking special effects made by people our parents called "nerdy losers" twenty years ago. Ever since I was a kid, I was drawn by the concept of alternative realities. The Wachowskiweiodasawhats-your-name-again brothers combined the metaphysical approach of philosophycal classics such as Plato's Cave, with flying kicks to the face and cartwheel shooting - which is not an easy task by any means. If I ever get bored of eating coconuts and trying to catch fish with my bare hands, I bet Keanu's bad acting and all the slow-motion fighting sequences would boost me up to the next monkey hunting.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - Directed by Kenneth Branagh, 1994

That movie shocked me when I was a kid, not only because they managed to screw up Deniro's face beyond recognition, but because the story is that classic "man versus God", "creature versus creator" dilemma - a theme I personally enjoy. The monster (which by the way, was not called Frankenstein) is a sentient being brought to life but forsaken by its own creator. Instead of doing what every rejected kid does and starting an emo band, the beast decides "fuck that". One can expect nothing short of gruesome killings and bloody disembowelment as revenge from the hands of the monster that surely holds a grudge.

Ong Bak (a.k.a. Some Oriental Dude Kicking Random Asses) - Directed by Some Oriental Dude Whose Name Has More Consonants Than Should Be Legally Permited, 2003

Last but not least, Ong Bak, the tale of the kung fu master with a heart of gold in a spiritual quest of punching bad guys in the face and/or finding some sacred stolen stuff. This perfected the "pointless ass kickery stitched together by pointless dialogues" technique. This cinematic approach is not an easy task to pull off, but the makers of this gem made sure they'd hit a home run but cramming over 80 minutes worth of footage of raw face bashing. Truly a must-have for any classic movie fan that happens to be on an uninhabited island (but doesnt mind the English voice over being roughly two minutes off, that is.)

Of course I'd turn all those fine movies down if I could only get my hand on one of those "How to Make a Raft Special Edition DVD".

Lots of free time + post its





















Six bucks.
Two hours.
Glue.
256 post-its.