I tweet. It’s a thing. Sometimes, 141 characters isn’t enough to truly say what I want to say. for times like that, I come here and really just air out my rants. It’s a good exercise in exorcism. Sometimes I need to explain my case with more clarity, other times I simply need to expand on a thought. So, this is that. Allow me to defend my tweets…

It’s true, all things are not black and white. As much as I’d like to be able to generalize for our entire species , some things I deem to be a constant are not what they seem. For example, being stuck in the friendzone. It’s a location most people have been forced into in their lives and no one is ever too psyched about it. On one hand, you want to have sex with this “friend” of yours. On the other, they look at you as a person who has a fleshy patch of skin where your genitals should be. It’s not an easy task to prove them wrong. Some guys are persistent and are willing to wait it out just in case. And I mean years. Decades. Just on that off chance of a night where the girl they’ve been secretly pining for will stop confiding to them about her other boyfriends and start looking at him like a person of sexual value. Now, I get why guys do this but it does undermine the entire point of a “friendship” (and I’m not one of those people who think men and women can’t actually be friends. I don’t think it’s common and balanced as some but it certainly does exist). But , to simply stick around a girl you wanna have sex with for years, masquerading as a “friend” just based on the chance you might one day get to put your penis in them…it’s just a testament to us men in general. Time is of no importance. Are priorities are less than admirable. We’re kinda the worst.
In my mind, the friendzone was always a place with very little wiggle room. I’ve had sex with female friends but , in those cases, I was never really in the friendzone. Sure, at times I felt like it but there was always an air of “eh, this could happen”. No one told me “You’re like a brother to me!” as my soul slowly crumpled up in a little ball the house at the end of “Poltergeist”. But, like I said, I always viewed being in the friendzone as lifetime location. Then, alone comes Quintin Tarantino and he shatters all I ever believed in.
Here is a man who first casted Uma Thurman in a movie in 1994. At the time he was the hottest new director in hollywood who had just made his most beloved movie , “Pulp Fiction” in which Thurman starred in. My timeline could be off but I’m pretty sure she was already married to Ethan Hawke at the time. Tarantino, who is a great director is also a total fucking nerd. Hearing the guy talk makes me wanna put on a football jersey and throw him in a locker. But he’s a brilliant guy so it somewhat evens it out. I gotta think, back then, he was obsessed with Thurman. I bet he was he buddy on set. Her “Work husband”, as it were. She probably though he was a sweet and funny guy. Her pal! The movie became a classic and 10 years later, he had her play the lead role in the Kill Bill movies. Still friends. Probably REALLY good friends. By this time, she’s divorced and he’s probably dating some quiet asian woman. Still, “Kill Bill” always seemed like an homage to Uma from Quinton. His admiration for her jumps off the screen. I’m sure he relentlessly flirted on set and she pretended she didn’t realize it was flirting , writing it off as “Quintin being Quintin!”.
But, something after that happened…Something changed. 10 years later they were seen “canoodling”. That means “They fuckin’, bro” , in press language. Now, neither person admits this happened and scoffed at the idea but, you know what? i think he broke the matrix on this one. I don’t know how…but I think he did. And that’s just the amount of false hope anyone who’s ever been in the friendzone needs to keep plugging away for another 20 years. Godspeed, friendzoned people. Maybe your time will come one day. It only took Q-dawg two decades but I’m sure the pay off was great.

It’s funny how random animals can become popular out of nowhere. Remember when Meerkat’s were a thing? Or what about baby seals? Pretty much any cute animal will have it’s time in the spotlight. Sure, they may not read buzzfeed’s “Top 46 most cutest ocelots” list but it exists.
So, in the last 5 years, sloths have began to see their star brighten. This has been to my joy cause I’ve always been a big sloth fan. Not only are they cute but I respect their lifestyle. But, I feel like the guy who liked the band before they got popular. I was riding for sloths in 7th grade. I learned about them when I gave a speech about them in class. I did the work. I went to the library (this was before the internet), I found the Encyclopedia S book. I plagiarized the entire thing and then read it to my class. That’s what we did back then. But, while I was doing this, i realized that I actually was interested in sloths. What I had learned about them made me like them. Like, did you know they can swim fast? How about: when they die, if they’re hanging in a tree, they will remain there for two weeks. Yes, they hang there, dead for two weeks until their grip finally loosens and they fall to the rain forest floor. How awesome is that? Like, you could be walking through a forest and a two week dead sloth could just fall on you. Gotcha! Sloths are so wacky.
I have a framed photo of a sloth on the wall of my apartment. I’ve had it since I was a kid. I own multiple sloth t-shirts. I’m really bout this sloth life, guys, So, to see all these “baby sloth’s take a bath!” videos that pop up on my facebook feed leaves me with mixed feelings. On one hand, I’m happy to see more sloths but , on the other, it’s like they’re no longer just my thing anymore. They’ve….sold out. Well, not them…but they’ve been exploited by the media. Soon, they’ll be wearing sunglasses at night and mailing in their cute photo ops. Man…what a bummer.

On twitter, you get notified every time a person of status follows you. About once every two weeks, my phone will buzz and I’ll look down to see something like “DJ Swingout has followed you!” Who? So, i go look and see that a guy I have never heard of who has 50,000 followers just followed me. Weird. Upon closer inspection, it turns out he follows 45,000 people. Upon either closer inspection, his 50,000 followers don’t give a fuuuuuuuuck about him. No retweets. No favorites. He basically has assembled a bot army to , perhaps, show some promoter at a club who will hire him off the strength of his twitter follows.
Now, I see this a few ways. Buying followers is corny and pathetic but I get why people do it. Twitter actually does somehow have weight. Especially for dj’s and entertainers. But the whole idea of following all those people is insane to me. Like, I follow less than 300 people and my timeline is a mess. If you follow 5000 people, that shit must be completely useless. No sane person who actually uses their twitter or instagram can possibly be okay with that. Only a desperate person or a fake person could handle such a ridiculous timeline. Not to mention, there’s an air of exclusivity to people who don’t follow EVERYONE. It makes them seem more, dare I say, human. And i feel as though all those people these fake dj’s are trying to get jobs from might take notice of that.
Now, there are exceptions. Lil B, Riff Raff, Taye Diggs. All those dudes took a “follow them all back” approach. They’re all established and , I’m assuming, never check their timelines in general. In fact, they seem like dudes who probably only use their dm’s, if you know what I mean. But the point is, people know who they are. If you have a million followers on a social network and you’re name draws a blank on a google search, what’s really good?
This business is tough and people have to do what they gotta do but, goddamn, have some self respect. I’m talking to you DJ Snapback and DJ Angel heart. Those aren’t real people but they might as well be.