January 25, 1999

By Morgan Carlson

I've discovered a new passion on-line..... www.amazon.com, a gigantic book and music store that lets customers write their own misguided and unedited reviews. Along with your written comments, you can give a 'star rating.' One star, natch, is the worst, and five stars is the best. Here is a breakdown of the meaning of each star total:

Five stars: people give this rating to anything, really. As long as they don't mind it, a CD or book can merit five stars.

One star: given to anything a customer finds to be below average.

What does this prove? That people, as always, are morons. There are two, three, and four-star ratings available, but nobody uses them. People appear to have a love-hate relationship with commerce, which shouldn't surprise me. But really, how many books - besides 'Encyclopedia Brown' and 'James and the Giant Peach' - are worth five stars? Oh yeah, House of Pain should also get five stars for their album, 'cause it has great lines like:

This style could also be used for other words, such as pasta-maker and meat grinder.

"Put on your meat grinder and grind some meat!"

But I digress.

The problem with having civilians do critiques is that we, the people, are too likely to believe we actually know jack shit about music.

That's a rather definite stretch of one's power of criticism. I WISH I could deem art as the worst of its kind, without actually hearing EVERY OTHER attempt at said art. The Backstreet Boys might be awful, but I'm willing to wager that there's five middle-aged impersonators out there who make the 'Boys sound like five James Browns.

"Giirrrrrrrrllllll.... you got me going craaaaaazyyyyyyyy..... ohoohhhoowowwwwoooooooohhh......."

And that was two and a half minutes right there.

Also, the scales are a little oddly balanced in on-line critiques. The people most likely to vote are the ones who either adore the album or loathe it. I doubt someone will spend an hour trying to write a page on how average the latest Weezer CD was. (Assuming they're still a band.) (And assuming anyone bought their last CD to vote on it.) Heck, I could vote on the album without even listening to it. Hah!

You're probably wondering what the point of all this is. My point is this: examine all the evidence I gave you, and think of the fact that the government wants people to vote for major world decisions on-line.

Ewwwwww.

I'm scared.

I give 'Nuke Australia' five stars.

- Morgan -

©1999, Morgan Carlson