Our love of the absurd and the ridiculously idiotic

By now many of you would have heard of Fx's Archer and if you haven't you owe it to yourself to watch this ridiculously idiotic but incredibly hilarious sexual spy comedy that parodies everything cool about James Bond but somehow seems totally awesome nonetheless.

As you can see, we have the super spy ( guy in the middle)  the hot other spy ( the girl with the gun)  and various other bumbling characters who make this show a complete riot.  In a nutshell Archer' activities include shooting people, banging women, screwing up missions, screwing women, shooting people who get in his way, having sex with more women and having his ass saved by his colleague Lana (mixed racial girl with gun in the picture), and then making sexually inappropriate remarks about her large hands.

Anyway, my question is, why do we love this utter idiocy.  It's nothing new, people have been ripping on Bond for years.  So why do people watch it every week?  Why does stupidity sell?  Is it because we love living vicariously through these utterly absurd characters or simply for the sake of meaningless laughs?

Auto-tune, it's a WMD.

In case some of you guys don't know what auto tune is, it's a software that "corrects" any inconsistencies in a vocalist's pitch.  So if you're singing a song in a studio and you make a tiny error that's not a big deal, but you wanna make your song perfect without having to sing it all over again you use auto tune.  Unless that it you are a modern pop/rap/hip-hip/any-type-of-music-bought-on-a-large-scale.  And if you lot are wondering why I'm only bringing this up now, considering that auto tune has been around for nearly a decade now just click this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0.  It literally drove me to the brink of madness and only the sound of AC/DC's riffs and Elton Johns voice could bring me back.

Now I honestly think that if a singer can't sing without a computer, then he/she shouldn't be singing in the first place.  And while I think that the use of auto tune here and there, in tiny tiny portions is okay, and sometimes the song is better off for it.  But in recent times it has gone totally out of hand.  I don't think that anyone my age or younger actually knows what a real singer sounds like and if asked to name one they will probably name someone like, well I wouldn't know.

Anyway what I'm trying to say is that, where is the line?  In music produced out of a computer rather than with the artists hands "real" music.  Is a computer a legitimate instrument?  And is there any talent involved in letting your voice be changed by a program?

Free speech for all even if someone gets hurt.

A particular Kansas church has garnered some notoriety for its hateful protests at military funerals.  And during the past week, the Supreme Court ruled that these hateful protests at military funerals were protected by the First Amendment by an eight to one majority.  My question to you all is; is it okay to hurt someone just so you can be heard, and is it legally justifiable?  I am neither condoning the actions of the protesters nor bashing the Supreme court’s decision, in fact I believe that the court got it right. 

The simple fact is that once we start stopping people from saying whatever they want where does it go from there.  I realize that I am beginning to sound like some ridiculous radical whose only voice in the world is on internet blogs.  Oh the irony.  But as someone who has witnessed countless debates and read of dozens of case on the issue of censorship, I must ask; who are we to decide what others get to say?  Who are we to decide what others think?  Where is the line between protection and control.  I do not claim to hold all the answers, but I do think that ,despite what any decent person would think, these hateful, despicable and horrid protests must be allowed to continue.