Don't ask me how I ran across (or acrost as they say in my old neighborhood of Redneckia) this amusing, then disturbing, then amusing again graph of common euphemisms and metaphors for lady pinky parts. This is valuable on both a literary and entertainment level, as it provides both adequate ideas for Halloween costumes ("What are you, a clam with a beard? I don't get it.") and awkward dialogue for a teen sex romp:

But I digress. For as much as I enjoy a good entendre-laced holiday or movie experience, it doesn't equal my love of and interest in genital-oriented beautification. Which brings us to Vagazzling. Not many people outside of Jennifer Love Hewitt's circle of friends had heard of vagazzling, and since the demise of Ghost Whisperer and the subsequent lack of caring by anyone in the media (Jennifer Love Who-it--get it?), no doubt vagazzling of the vajayjay would have remained in obscurity, if not for George Lopez.

Ah Lopez. You bring to light the hidden things of the world, like the Second-Coming Jehovah, or Julian Assange.

Vagazzling, aka Glitzing the Slit, aka Glamming the Clam, aka Decking the Halls With Rows of Jewelry, is barely invasive, unlike its less appealing and pricklier cousin, clitoral piercing (and the prick is quite clitoral, as opposed to Daily Kos' assessment of Dennis Kucinich). The basic feature is a genital area that, like the gold fields of San Francisco or Silvio Berlusconi's bordellos, sparkles and shines from rows of tiny jewelry carefully placed into sexy patterns by a vagazzling expert craftperson.

Is it just me, or is this the best thing to happen to the female sex organ since cautionary tales of vagina dentata put the fear of castration upon men who are superstitious about what monster awaited their bedtime frolicking? The new bejeweled woman won't bite. Instead of teeth, we are presented with Swarovski-crystals--jewels covering the jewel, little shiny flowers surrounding The Flower of Power. Nothing to fear here.

Vagazzling highlights the basic differences between men and women. Men have tools. Women have accessories. Which they then accessorize. It's hard to imagine penazzling becoming a rage, though if it did it'd probably look and feel like a tiny--I mean, average--I mean, it's a grower-not-a-shower--medieval mace.

Vagazzling is a welcome mat on the doorstep of the wealthy slut, but I see it, like all celebrity-endorsed clam glam makeovers, trickling down to the lowly and the poor, giving women of all socio-economic strata their own nectar-hole upgrades. After it gets used up by Perez Hilton, we'll see the artistic surge of literary vulva-va-va-voom, Eve Ensler style. From art comes commerce: we'll see vagazzling vending machines next to Best Buy kiosks in airports, lady muffin decor huts next to the sunglass place at local strip malls, and eventually it will pass into the cultural norm, like anal bleaching and voting for Tea Party candidates.

Ladies may balk at what first appears to be a disturbing outbreak of glittering herpes, but if the Lovester covets the femme gems, why shouldn't you?

Image courtesy of Giavasan

Standing ovations are basically an orgy of mutual masturbation, but due to public decency laws have taken the form of, well, standing and clapping. Think about it. Everyone stands at attention, stroking the artists'... egos. It makes you feel good. It makes the performer feel good. Everyone is privy to the happiness and elation of everyone around them, and each also has a private sensation of pleasure, and unless you're doing it wrong, the payoff at the end is a climax of clapping that results in the orgasmic encore...

Okay, so the metaphor is a bit stretched. So try this on for size.

Standing ovations suck. They sap the event of its spontaneity, since they are now the par dessert of any social evening; they are expected and even anticipated, and thus disingenuous. What once was a signal that the audience recognized and rewarded the impressive talents of the evening has become passé, empty of meaning and divorced of all original intent.

It is the stillborn fetus of the evening; yes, it comes out, but it is pretty bloody useless as well as tragic.

The theory goes, standing ovations are the mark of respect by the audience on behalf of the performer for an unusually brilliant performance. But in this age of Twitter and dwindling newspaper revenues and burst housing bubbles, the fact that anyone even came to the performance should be a mark of respect and admiration. When ticket sales for philharmonics, operas, and theatrical performances have plummeted and funding for the arts has dwindled into a wasted uranium slag stream, it would seem the occasion for standing ovation should be the audience actually showing up, and if anyone should stand, it would be the performers, and they should do so as the audience enters the auditorium. The correct accolade should be, "Thanks for showing up and subsidizing us!"

But that's pretending there's worth in the audience, a sad myth entrapping both sides. There is no worth in the people filling the seatholes of the latest rendering of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 or the laughing hoi polloi at Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.

Standing ovations tax the already burdened audience member, who must contend with his own cultural ignorance as he tries to ascertain whether the performance was A) actually good; and B) that he understood it. On top of that, the ignoramus is now faced with the frightening prospect: Do I stand with the rest of the sheeple or should I sit and proffer my disdain for outmoded social conventions and earn the ire of my fellow attendees? It is a quandary that would vex even the most cultured patron of the arts, much less the brainless masses who dress to impress and show the world they are aware because they read the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times.

What's even worse is the ovation grudgingly given by an audience too dumb or too bored but also too cowardly not to shut the hell up and just leave. When the performance is not the greatest thing since that threesome in Cancun you had in college, then half-heartedly clapping a few times isn't doing anyone any favors.

Ovations should be returned to the place of ancient but outdated traditions, alongside the sacrificial virgins and Masses spoken only in Latin. Stand up to this stupid custom by staying in your seat. Unless you just don't know what the hell is going on.

The exclamation was once reserved for moments of surprise, exhibitions of exhilaration, outbursts and ejaculations (the verbal kind). Now it's used to express mere interest or even to show that you've actually paid attention. You see it in emails and text messaging and tweets--microbursts of information; "Sounds great! I'll meet you there!"; "Thanks for letting me know. I'll let you know how it goes!"; "Have a great day!"

The exclamation point has become the crutch of inauthentic people; the point is to show that you are someone you are not, saying things you don't believe. It is the textual penis raping our language and violating us at the end of every 140 characters.

We are so starved for attention and require validation for every syllable we utter, print, or publish; our reaction to the passe and banal is feigned excitement and urgency we neither feel nor believe in, yet expect others to feel for us and our mundane matters. When we respond to the trivial, we want others to believe we are interested, but the medium seems engineered to transmit little sentiment, so we compensate by adding pomp and flair to what is and should be a vanilla reply. The spurious dash confers sensation onto mere information.

A common defense of the orthographic excess is that the exclamation point helps convey friendliness. "Thanks!" is friendlier than "Thanks." To that I say, what made friendliness the arbiter of transient information exchanges? If anything, the exclamation adds to the information processing power requirement, the excitement increases energy usage, an unnecessary waste in this conservation age. And at what point does my exclamation become so overused as to become irrelevant or ironic? Are we so impoverished by the efficiency of the medium that we must feed it Twinkies?

I won't go so far as to equate our national obsession with the textual bang and sex--that's a job for the anthro-apologists. But think about these bursts of information we exchange--tweets and text messages are like the eponymous quickie: short and sometimes sweet, but almost never foundational and nearly always forgettable. We rarely ascribe much value to the average transmission. Our insertion of the exclamation point is like the end of the conquest portion of a short and torrid affair.

Think of the euphemisms for the exclamation point. Smash. Bang. Words of destruction, of pain, of loud noises and painful deliveries. And we can't just say something. We have to shout; we have to be louder than anyone else, even when we're replying to someone.

While these display more excitement than the response warrants, isn't it clear that what's driving these unnecessary spikes of textual adrenaline isn't actual excitement, but the pathological need to be needed? Aren't these ejaculatory points the defining feature of our ADHD culture, the tabloid urge for scandal and intrigue in a society ruled by the tweet? If we are to be judged by every jot and tittle, wouldn't the verdict be "too much banging?"

My keen study of human interaction and subtle googly eyes has directly led to two romantic relationships, in which I take more pride than my own long-term relationship. Had I not created opportunities for non-overlapping social groups, these paramours would have never puckered up and later thanked me repeatedly for arranging them like the Indian parents of 8-year-olds.

But you know my greatest comfort in these carefully-calibrated setups? That my creations aren't creating, or at least prophylacting. When it comes to pagans, matchmaking should get the withdrawal method.

Even rotten little punks like raccoon-mascara Jenny Humphrey on "Gossip Girl" saved themselves for years while protecting their reputations with tales of tail. It's become a cultural trope that high school girls lie about their sexual history to avoid the "prude" tag and further the post-"Wings" career of Thomas Haden Church.

But once you start college, the other shoe drops, as well as panties and moral standards. With no Big Brother figure to keep them in line, today's 18 to 20-somethings are going at it like they’re getting college credit (and you Sacramento State students probably are).

So why should I help them hook up?

Sure, I see the chemistry (dot com) between those who are perishing in my extended social circle - the furtive glances, the humor-independent laughter, the grabbing of a thigh at a 1955 dinner table.  Knowing my record in successful nonsexual hookups, my gal has asked for my help in troubleshooting a stalled mating process that had baffled proverbial zoologists nudging the pair together.

What's my reward if I can break this impasse? Knowing the couple is coupling twice a day, four days a week, laughing maniacally at the sanctity of marriage as they "go down" the road to perdition?  I'm tired of hearing these dyads' tawdry references to their hugfests at harvest hayrides, karaoke nights and other twilight gatherings of the damned.

The cutest couples with bling-free index fingers are only addicted to eskimo kissing!  They clasp hands on restaurant tables; collapse on the couch into each others' arms, all grins and giggles but no gazonga-groping; and talk to each other. Fornicators, in contrast, talk around each other, to other people, because they've lost all respect for each other.  As a wise Jew once said, "you can't have sex with someone you admire."

So if you're willing to abstain, I'm willing to matchmake. Unless you're into Twilight. If he doesn't make a move on you overnight, he’s gay.

Time was, you could call a woman ma'am without her getting offended. Just because that time was 40 years ago and mostly in the South doesn't mean it didn't demonstrate a certain quality of upbringing. Then, it was charming. Now, it'll get you a dirty look.

What happened?

Apparently, "ma'am" carries the connotation of age, and in the West, age is antithetical the ideal. Implying a woman is old, or even hinting that a woman has an age other than a nebulous hand-wave in the area of the mid-twenties is akin to calling her fat or pointing out her expanding crow's feet. If we ever get around to respecting our elders again, the first thing we'll be able to do is safely ask a woman's age, and get the truth. But that's a long row to hoe.

To some, there's the hint of sexual disenfranchisement, the defeminization of the addressee. She feels the throwback to the days of manly men and mousy women, when the only secretary she could ever aspire to be was at the local insurance office and equal pay for equal work was about as fair as Whites Only country clubs. Ma'am supposedly gives off the whiff of royalty and distance, simultaneously bestowing respect and standoffishness.

For Senator Barbara Boxer, "ma'am" implies the lack of career; last summer when US Army General Michael Walsh referred to her as such, she asked him to call her 'senator' instead. "It's just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title, so I'd appreciate it." I'm not sure she realized that in the military it's common practice to refer to equals and superiors as sir, ma'am, or madam.

If the stuffy Madam Senator from the bankrupt state of California gets annoyed at the erroneous eponym, what are the pleasant, well-meaning men from Brer Rabbit's part of the country to do?

Perhaps there's an unspoken objection to the word, namely, its phonetic relation to the missus' front-running mammaries. Every time some polite young gent sends her a ma'amogram, it's a subtle innuendo: Show me your boobs!

Honestly, I don't see any of it. Is the word, unarguably coming from a linguistic place of power and respect, so frightening that even its beleaguered beneficiaries shy away, opting for the far less respect-worthy "Miss" or the dis-engenderous "Ms"? Who exactly is being sexist here?

Even Hollywood agrees with me. In one episode of M*A*S*H Major Margaret Houlihan told Radar O'Reilly, "Men are sirs. Women are ma'ams. I am a woman: I am a ma'am." From God's liberal lips to our overly sensitive ears.

But you know what, in deference to the senators and secretaries of the world, I offer up some alternatives; these are ways you can address women that are flattering, respectful, and non-threatening:

Big Mama - this name refers to her bigness of heart and mind, her astounding mental girth, and combines with her natural child-rearing capabilities and her child's innate affinity for her in one beautiful expression of maternal awesomeness.

FeminiMs - Willowy children of the revolution should applaud this powerful address to a woman who knows no master, least of all linguistic enslavement to the male's subordinating claws. FeminiMs (pronounced Fem-en-em-Mizz) is proud and strong, either a single woman with a career in business or politics or a pro-gun girlie who knows the best way to earn respect is to take it without apologies.

Madam Gyneral - Only applies to women in the military, but can be any woman of the femme persuasion, from enlisted ms to the career officer to the President's Petraeus replacement.

I hope these will be useful for the new generation of men who will continue to be baffled by the winds and waves mentality of women in America.

Having driven away the Sonics like a mistreated husband who will "be right back" with smokes, sports-sane Seattle has put its self-esteem into the Storm, a WNBA franchise that has just humped its second championship like the boyfriend on the side that it is. This estrogenocidal team has, ironically, brought a ray of sunshine not only to fans of passing, that most womanly of sports moves, but also local businesses like Microsoft, whose idea to emblazon "Bing" across the muscular chests of Storm players probably contributed 0.05% to its recent climb in market share.

As Zack Morris might say, "Timeout." Has Seattle really sunk that low?

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, shortly after moving to Seattle, bluntly told the city's gathered tech entrepreneurs that their ambitions were lower than Jamie Lee Curtis selling pooping yogurt. I think something similar is aheel in Seattle's Ellen-Portia romance with the Storm.

The WNBA is nice in its own way. Title IX empowered female basketball players like an "Expanding Your Horizons" assembly, redistributing the boys' resources so the girls could excel in funny-looking jump shots and dateability. Long-useless stadiums like Seattle's Key Arena finally have a purpose other than ethnic festivals and job fairs. And there's no denying the talent in players like the Storm's Sue Bird, who has statue-defecated like her surname all over other teams.

But come on. Watching women play basketball is like watching children perform a Scientology pageant - unintentionally hilarious.

They can't dunk, which gives the NBA (not the "MNBA") its whiff of homoerotic imperialism. They look like they tripped and spilled a bag of groceries whenever they shoot. And these double Xers dress like Muslim women in France looking for something to replace the veil in sexlessness.

Basketball negates the natural grace and curves in women that other sports flesh out, such as gymnastics and skating. Oddly, it embues grace in men who, hours later, are farting, gambling and auditing their cocaine supply. That's why I suggest...

Skintight WNBA uniforms. This is what we, straight and lesbian, really want to see. It's what originally got women into basketball and made the Laker Girls popular quite apart from the team's performance. Basketball is the only women's sport where you identify the gender based solely on ponytail and height (and Eastern European male players are even making this fuzzy).

I can already hear the chopped air from your wagging fingers that these uniforms will create all sorts of body-image issues in young basketball players, requiring another series of seminars at my alma mater. Female ballers aren't supposed to look like gymnasts, but rather Justin Long, they say.

But club owners, bleeding money enough that every player's boobs blare Bing, might be more receptive. The WNBA's biggest problem is its demographics - a shortage of adult men and their children who would otherwise booze up and pig out at a basketball game. From watching "The Wire," I know that lesbians can drink Jimmy McNulty under the table if they want, but a WNBA game simply isn't the place to do it. It's too ... nurturing.

Maybe the answer is an expansion team to test the concept. Does "Louisville Lycra" turn you on?

With apologies to that Scientologish book and movie, I have the Secret:  give one person in the venue a syringe of polio, and warn the crowd.

Infecting someone with Live Man Non-Walking disease is the perfect antidote to reckless raving.  There’s nothing the raver loves more than superlimbinality, with a close second to glowsticks.  The downside to forced sitting is denying the United States the opportunity to harness the vast reserves of green energy these engines of eccentricity produce every weekend, though bum cup-shaking can make up much of this.  Rob-Lowe-in-"Thank-You-for-Smoking" Syndrome is another risk, but Zen garden-tending unleashes itself on others only when the gardener relates his tending at sushi happy hour.

Of course, the person given this awesome power to FDR must be blameless, unbiased and in complete control of his passions (and yes, I mean "his" - come on, women?).  In other words, a figure like Jesus...'s fictional predecessor, Plato's philosopher king.  Someone who can see the Form of expressive dancing at concerts and make the call, unblinking and swiftly, when the DA emerges in the pit.  (Peripheral DAs, usually in the back of the crowd, are a subject for another day.)

You may rightly object:  What happens if a group of DAs decides to gang up on the Polionator, like suicide bombers on the Mossad or Agent Smiths on Neo in the second Matrix?  How will he (and yes, I’m firm on this male thing) manage to prick every prick?  Aren’t we just escalating the violence?

To which I respond: Shouldn't you be having sex with your ridiculously tall wife, Dennis Kucinich? The obvious answer is, the Polionator just starts sticking everyone as fast and recklessly as he can.

When concertgoers realize they can be unjustly pricked because of the DAs, they will police the crowd themselves to halt any wriggling that deviates beyond a personal sphere.  Women will kick the offenders (typically male) in the groin, and men will grab their arms and twist backwards, known as Biffing.  Even small transgressions will be swiftly dealt with, like Rudy Giuliani’s police department applying the Theory of Broken Windows.

And all will dance happily ever after. Also, perhaps, warily.

Is the Nehru ever "in"?

As Lisa Simpson might say, "Neh."

The Nehru is never acceptable. Not if you're a Mumbaikar barister with a penchant for exploiting slum dogs; not if you're a Western male, aged 59, vacationing in Bali spending your plummeting-value dollars on Thai import hookers and knockoff Aussie brews; not even if you're one or more of the Beatles (dead or alive).

Quite simply, the Nehru shirt is to acceptable as Dr. Evil is to reasonably achievable nefarious plots. It's the reason India was so backward before the Brits brought their unique imperialism to rule the subcontinent. It's the Greyhound buslines of suit apparel, the DSL of broadband, the weak vegan cousin of the chocolate mousse.

It's the jacket the Antichrist will wear.

Nehru shirts, jackets, or any variation thereof, are the lazy man's entrance ticket into a barely palatable textile shirtgatory, a visible statement of fashion agnosticism--not brave enough to go full-tee, not devout enough for a collar. You're lukewarm, baby, and not worthy of being kept in God's sweatshop, much less His mouth.

Wearing the Nehru implies a faux-pop-mod-minimalist aesthetic, but where's the proof? After all, you've only donned this foreign-ish item in the hope of besting your slack-jawed yokel competitors, out-mint juliping William Faulkner, or challenging Bobby Jindal (the American/Republican/Southern Jawaharlal Nehru) to a fisticuffs duel, and impressing your late 1960's music/entertainment devotees, but you have no prior claim on the sensibilities that defined our cultural forbears and contemporary heroes. You're saying you abhor the blight of pin-striped formalism and appreciate the exotic splendor of subcontinental parliamentary politik. And with the right shade of skin, or if you're Sammy Davis Jr., you may have a chance at pulling it off.

But you're not, and you don't, so you can't.

What you're really saying is that you're rather good at wiping out old ladies' savings account with a glitzy Telethon of Love, Benny Hinn style. Think about the modern connotations. When you think Nehru, the image that comes to mind is not a Monkee or Johnny Carson nyucking it up on late night, but the Tim Robbins' "Ian" character in High Fidelity, all greasy, graying ponytail, patchouli stench, and world-pop jungle music on the stereo. And do you really want to stroll down the Steven Seagal backalley, with all its weight gain and weird sexual deviancy baggage? That's not a light burden, my fashion forward friend.

If we have to appeal to your base instinct for categorizing everything along a moral plank, then consider this: pop fiction evildoers are often the leaders in Nehru torso-wear; Dr. Evil, Bond villain Ernst Blofeld, and Dr. Who arch-nemesis The Master all secreted Nehru-ism, as if it was a glandular outgrowth of their own demented desires. Villains have their charm, but for all their bluster and schemes, in the end their only real talent is in pairing with a midget to perform Will Smith parenting parody raps. And that's what we call "dated," the hipness equivalent of pretty much any S&L skit from the late nineties.

Like overwrought TV villains might say, you'll Neh-rue the day if you pick this emasculated buttondown over a solid two-piece. Leave it on the Goodwill rack, or better yet, fiddle while Nehru burns; you're better off saying no.

Soccer, or football, as the brownskins and limeys call it, is a full-throated attack on American exceptionalism, and if I ran U.S. Africa Command, Johannesburg would have been liberated before the first vuvuzela blew.

Darwin himself would be aghast at the spectacle of fields of dwarfs running around like idiots, kicking a checkered ball across a vast expanse in a fruitless quest for meaning. You know who's drawn to soccer at an early age? Kids who are short, weak and grip-challenged - in other words, who can't cut it in basketball, football or baseball. It's no surprise that soccer is the number one youth participation sport in the U.S. - it's a giant self-esteem parade for the genetically disadvantaged, the sports version of social promotion. The only shorties we should be lauding are hos and Elmore Leonard characters.

A good test of a sport’s validity is the quality of women it draws to even mediocre players. Here too, soccer must take an existential red card. Until David Beckham’s mojo can be extracted and mass-produced by Axe, women will continue to associate these blighted ballers with that fat ginger kid (or Will Ferrell). It can’t even produce white-collar criminals like the real sports leagues. If you’re turned on by parking-lot fights between jack-o'-lanterned baldies, by all means, bed a Red Bull.

If the Ammonites hadn’t been obliterated by the LORD thousands of years ago, today they'd be worshipping MLS instead of Molech, led by their chief spiritist, Paul the Octopus. No other sport comes close to competing with governments and religions for the hope and blind servitude that soccer instills in its subjects. The Vatican would love to wield the power than FIFA has over developing countries. This shouldn't surprise us - Europe chopped the balls off Christianity, India worships a bajillion gods already, and the only other bond Africans share is their governments' brutality toward them.

Soccer is the geopolitical translation of "Revenge of the Nerds" - a convenient vehicle for the WASP-haters to drag down the U.S. and assert the legitimacy of all nations, no matter how objectively terrible they are. North Korea has a squad that is almost certainly cracking rocks and paying off their bosses to get work that actually pays. We all know how Saddam’s Iraq treated its athletes. Whip your citizens into a frenzy against the U.S., and they'll forget their government is the real enemy.

Fast kicking, low scoring, and ties - you betcha! Soccer's message to the world is: It's OK if you don't win.  Not being defeated is good enough. Distracting the public with fancy footwork is more important than giving them the tools to score in their personal lives.

Goooooooooooood riddance to Americans' passing interest in this egalitarian excrement for another year.

To make my point, You have to hear it. But first, some backstory.

Lady Gaga thinks she's doing something unique, original, and exciting. And she is. And she isn't. Because of course, nothing is ever new under the sun. Ever. I think Marcel Duchamp said that, was echoed by the Dadaists and Fluxists, and even Jazz had a go at it. And then there was Madonna.

Everything that Lady Gaga is is because of Madonna. And I'm not the only one to think so. Get your own Material, Girl! But I digress.

The song in question, Bad Romance, features a pulsing grind, droning bass and electric ethereal tones shackled to relatively insipid lyrics. The song is about Lady Gaga's quest for fame within the music industry, her play-it-by-the-numbers power grab and submission and ultimate servitude to the god of Western consumerism. Blah blah blah. Its lyrics are still fairly empty. And she can't lip sync worth a damn.

But right away, from the opening twittering high tones, LGG goes big with a OOOOOOpening paen to some nameless hope or sorrow, which leads into the very first line: "Caught in a Bad Romance"...

Listen to the Bad RomANCE segment

And that's when you hear it. Listen to it again. Caught in a Bad RomANCE. Bad RoMANCE. Bad roMAAAANCE.

The sound of Lady Gaga's unmistakable cowboy roots are never more clear than in those two opening lines, when the soft twang of a desert rustler permeates the Romance, making a lie of Gaga's entire enterprise. This is where the Lady Gaga myth falls apart.

Gaga has sold herself as the hippest and most counter revolutionary of all artists, a slave to the Fame Monster (and a bit of one herself), unequaled in genius and industry savvy. But more importantly, what she hasn't, what she can't reveal outright, is that she is a slave to being something she's not.

Her videos are subversive, dark, and disturbing, and often baffling; clearly she has a vision and a sense of herself as a mystical queen of artistic pop. So why is that annoying drawling twang just sitting there like an elephant in the penthouse? Is it affectation? Is it an aural perturbation, heard only by the "haters" who are immune to the genius of Gaga's art?

Hardly. Like Clarice Starling, Gaga has come a long way from her humble roots, hiding childhood poverty and possibly range-riding under a horrendous display of self-lionization--a testicle-less spectacle designed to misdirect the eye with flash and verve. In reality, Gaga is a scared, confused, power-hungry cowgirl who simply can't bring herself to admit that what drives her, underneath those androgynous body suits, the bizarre symbolism and the occult imagery, she's still not more than one generation from poor western trash.