Oh hey little friends.  How’s your first week of the new year going?

You still holding onto those New Year’s Resolutions or have those crashed and burned and ended up in the shithouse yet?  I know that I personally have to take anxiety medicine before I browse my facebook feed because it’s all still gym selfies and vegan meal planning.

We get it, you lift.

Anyways, a year ago..  er..  roughly a year ago, I sat down a penned a poorly thought out diatribe about the 6 Things That Can Fuck Off in 2016.  Some people laughed, some people cried, and the true friends were the ones we made along the way.

Anyways, the point of the matter is that it’s about that time again, and here we are one more time with 7 Things That Can Fuck Off in 2017:

1. When Horror films or any variety of horror media is said to be “scarier than the Exorcist” or “the next Exorcist”.

Allow me to preface this particular ranting by stating that the fucking director of the Exorcist, William Friedkin, did not set out to make a horror film and only accepted his work as a horror piece after everyone got their panties in a bunch and pissed in their stretch pants over it.  Now, with that made perfectly clear, anytime I’m debating watching a horror film or checking out a new TV series and the claim is made that said series or film is “scarier than the Exorcist”, I immediately get cancer.

Look.  First of all.  The fucking statement is moot.  If you made a horror film and call it scarier than a film that was never originally meant to be a horror film, you’re putting the cart before the horse because that shit makes no sense.  Second, I firmly believe that this statement is meant to sound ominous and deep in some way.  It’s a way for the writer of the statement to simultaneously pat themselves on the back and jerk themselves off at the same time.  By referencing something from the 1970s you get to sound *kitsch* and *retro*, but the Exorcist is still a well enough known title that you can almost seem to appear to know what you’re talking about.

Now, don’t get me wrong, here.  The Exorcist is a fine movie, but there’s a lot of scarier shit that came out in the exact same year.  The original Black Christmas comes to mind, but somehow it’s less hipster cool to say “It’s scarier than Black Christmas”, but if someone did make a film and was like, “ITS THE NEXT BLACK CHRISTMAS” – fucking sign me up.  I wanna see that shit.

(Can you tell I recently got mega stoned with my Dad and watched Black Christmas?  That shit is dope AF).

2.  Deafheaven

This seems a bit like an easy target in that Deafheaven is a super highly divisive band in the “metal scene”, but, I actually saw these dickweeds live and they’re awful.

Now, allow me to explain.  Previously to all of this, I’ve listened to Deafheaven and while I’d sooner listen to them than a lot of other bands, there’s something about the mixing of post-hardcore wankery into my black metal that really curdles my tea and just doesn’t work for me.  If that’s your shit, then cool, you do you.  However, I did photographs and media this past year at Sled Island 2016 and Deafheaven was one of the major players at this festival.  The event was tough to get into and crowded with a lot of the hipster black metal types that would veritably be eaten alive at a Revenge show, but more on this later.

Anyways, these guys suck live.  Period.  Not only are they not tight, they’re just downright boring, and I have been brought over to many a band’s side by seeing a good live show (Goatwhore is an example – they never did much for me before I saw them live).

Further to this point, a goodly amount of the crowd at Sled Island at this particular show was again the hipster metal type – super clean black denim jackets, Urban Outfitters type look, curly mustaches, DISCHARGE patches on man-purses, and this is all fine..  however, it was this type that was doing a lot of the shit talking about the other festival goers including a lot of the other metalheads.  Now, why I take issue with this is because, I don’t think it’s fair on one hand to champion Deafheaven who had to make a video with fucking Ray-Bans about how they ~*get bullied*~ and then see no issues with calling out other metalheads for the music they get down to.  That shit is lame as hell.  Leave people alone.  None of you are special.  Also, if you’re gonna talk shit, please maybe don’t have a giant Deafheaven backpatch on your jacket.

If anyone else would pay to see Deafheaven go nose to nose with Revenge, let me know and we can get a deadpool going.

3.  Enamel Pins

I seriously hate enamel pins.  Look, we all love to collect things and for those of us who come from a punk and metal background, having pins present on your vests and jackets is only second nature.  I get it.  We all get it.  The first few enamel pins that our friends made, they were kitschy and cool and having a couple on your vest seemed to be pretty cool.  I personally kinda felt it was a nod to the 1990s ever present flea market character that was a big cowboy dude with a cowboy hat covered in enamel pins.  Now I feel like the resurgence of this particular character from the ether has given a platform for a lot of shitty artists to start churning out shitty enamel pins en masse.  There’s pins out there now that either don’t look like anything or two, are so fucking moronic that even looking at them is like the visual experience of a real groaner dad joke.

^^^^Like this.  That doesn’t look like anything.  I bet from 5ft away it’s just a random blob of fucking nothing, because from super close up, it just looks like dogshit.

Like.  If you’re an artist and you make a few enamel pins and they sell well and you’re successful, that’s fine, I ain’t here to blame a bitch for trying to make a buck – but maybe stop after you find yourself churching out garbage that doesn’t look like anything.

Not everything is meant to be or should be turned into an enamel pin.

The best enamel pins I see are simple.  Less is, after all, more.

And really, here’s a practical question, how you comin’ to fuck a chick in a vest that is essentially post modern plate mail?

4.  Metal journalism websites having ‘manifestos’.

I’m including this one if only because I spent a good week and a half laughing about this when it first happened.  VICE has one, and MetalSucks has one as well and I fail to see the point.  The communist hammer and sickle nod in the particular image is also pretty gross in that at any time, you’re welcome to come talk to my Grandma who escaped with her family from the Communist rule of the Ukraine, so maybe do a bit of research before you espouse the types of the values that destroyed families, saw people starved and beaten and thrown into gulags for minor crimes etc, but like most things – feelings over facts.  I get that no one wants to be seen as an alt-right sympathizer or some variety of Trump supporter, but I don’t think that diving too headlong in the other direction is good either.

Now – back to the concept of having a manifesto.  First off, if you’re part of the press, it’s your job to tell stories and while the ultimate goal of the press is to be unbiased, that shit isn’t going to happen anytime soon and anyone with even a partially functioning cerebral cortex will tell you that all of the press is biased.  Reading the MetalCucks, I mean MetalSucks manifesto is pretty cringey – WE WILL ONLY COVER ARTISTS WE LIKE/AGREE WITH.  Yeah.  That’s how the press works generally.  I don’t see how this is ground breaking news.  George Carlin said, “Art is politics”, so I don’t see how this is groundbreaking news either.  You aren’t special because you are featuring artists you like.  Why do you need a manifesto for this?  The blatant, “WE ARE PROUD SJWS” is also a bit problematic for me.  I’m a queer woman of color and I don’t need a bunch of metal dudes speaking for me, I think I can figure out how to do that on my own thank you.  Also – the “We will not tolerate hate speech” comment is pretty rich.  My buddy Mike from EYEHATEGOD was the victim of some pretty gross comments when it was revealed he needed a liver transplant.  My buddy Phil Anselmo has been single white female stalked by MetalSucks following his “wine power” incident, but surprisingly MetalSucks never bothers to do coverage when he’s out there supporting local and indie acts, signing them to his label, or in my case – telling me to take up photography for my journalism because he believed in us..  So..  MetalCucks will not be bullied, but they have no issues bullying others?  Seems a bit rich.  Seems a bit like the age old adage of “can dish it out but can’t take it”.

Moral absolutism is stupid.

Anyways.  Here’s the DIAG manifesto – “drink whiskey, pass the Dutch, send more dick pics and eat tacos for breakfast”.  Seems to be a little more accessible.

5.  The sudden resurgence and acceptance of ‘feelings over facts’.

We find ourselves living in changing times and I have seen in my life time, a falling of a lot of previously held strict standards of belief.  Gay marriage is legal (for now), the movement for trans acceptance is gaining speed (as it should be), and slowly the gender binary crumbles.  These are all great positives.  However, along with this train of progressive thinking, we have a bunch of snake oil salesmen and charlatans latching on.  We also live in a time where experts are considered inaccessible, inauthentic and where education is seeing as ‘ableist’.  The expert opinions of physicians, scientists, nurses and those in healthcare are seen as opinions controlled by “shill corporations”.

The level of Ancient Aliens like conspiracy that surrounds almost every avenue of thinking permeates into a lot of the memes that I see getting circulated around facebook and a lot of this can be translated right back to one entity, the ultimate evil:

Now, if you don’t know who David Avocado Wolfe is, allow me to say right now that I am immensely envious of you.  David Avocado Wolfe makes a lot of those cute memes that you see floating around facebook espousing the benefits of healthy eating, raw cacao and other crunchy but seemingly harmless things.  He is also a known charlatan and has replaced Joseph Mercola as the dangerous figurehead of the post modern snake oil salesman.

And this is where the emergence of the feelings over facts movement comes from.  Like Trump, Wolfe undermines the opinions of professionals as corrupt, but then performs a skillful bait and switch, offering up that his (and only his) knowledge is superior and can deliver his audience unto the bosom of good health, for a small fee of course.

My issue with David Avocado Wolfe stems largely from spending the past several years studying disease and immunology.  While I am by no means some variety of expert, I consider myself to have a very good grasp of science and when I see lofty woo-ridden shit shared around, specifically around the whole “vaccines = autism” thing, I start blacking out and seeing red like Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill.  My brain short fuckulates.

Now, the thing is, this shouldn’t be this way.  We’ve all gone through some variety of high school science and I’m curious if all of this just fell out of our butts somewhere along the way.

The rejection of vaccines by the bourgeoisie upper class is nothing short of the definition of a first world problem.  And the further disgustingly ableist speaking that suggests a dead child is better than autistic one is something that I take personal offense to.

Nah.  Feelings over facts.  Vaccine ingredients are scary wary and me no likey.

A lot of this thinking ties right along with the natural foods movement – “only eat things you can pronounce”, “chemicals are bad”, and I’m here to tell you fine people that we’re all made of chemicals.  We are carbon based.  Scary, right?  I’m also here to tell you that the dose makes the poison.  I can give you a Tylenol for your headache, but if I force a whole bottle down your throat, I will successfully destroy your liver.

Pseudoscience is simply that – pseudo.  It can sound good to the uneducated, but even minor digging renders it powerless.

While I don’t think you should simply take anything that someone says as perfect gospel, I generally think that scientists aren’t going to be the ones fucking you over. Pro-tip: If someone is refuting scientific knowledge by trying to sell you something, they’re probably full of shit.

So I leave you with this:

6.  Jason Lei Howden and his new ‘film’, the sequel to Deathgasm.

Alright.  This dude, Jason Lei Howden is  special shit pile and I want to write here to inform my dear readers to be aware of fuckery where it exists.
Now, I’ve spoken about Jason Lei Howden, the director Deathgasm previously and it isn’t pretty.  For those not playing the home game along with me, early in 2016 I watched Deathgasm, well sort of watched it, it was so badly made and wrought that I had to turn it off part way through.  I took to twitter to complain rather good naturedly about it, and this ended with the director of the film and the producer freaking the absolute fuck out, with both of them repeatedly blocking and unblocking Scotty F and myself.  Jason Lei Howden also called us “middle class hipsters” and said we don’t deserve to his watch his films.  Cool.  I still puzzle over what being called middle class means.  Does that mean that he’s poor and he’s calling us rich, or that he’s rich and he’s calling us poor?  Please clarify.

So, the reason I’m writing this here is because I believe in the ultimate freedom of the press in that, if I create something and put it out there, I have no control over how that media is seen by anyone and that anyone has a right to say whatever they like about it.

Now.  Flipping shit on someone because they didn’t like your film is not only fundamentally wrong, it’s a bizarre denial of free speech.

Further to this point, we are not the only site that Howden has done this to, and I wish to make others aware.  If you review this man’s material you are complicit in his erratic tantrums against journalists, which is in itself a version of fascism.  Unfortunately you can’t tell people what to think and further, if you get THAT butthurt over the opinion of someone online, maybe you should just stay inside and lock yourself in a closet and eat Cheerios for the rest of your life.

And for someone who claims to be “tr00 metal” with his momma-made homemade kutte, it’s sure not metal to try to tell someone how to feel or how to behave.  We didn’t like your film, and not even that, I said I didn’t care for the obsession it had with dick jokes..  That’s a pretty valid criticism.

Also, I’ve been getting some lulz from this statement from Howden:

“So I just finished this. There is literally more gore in the first 10 minutes than the entire first #deathgasm. If you kinda liked the first, this will make your head implode. If you thought the first Deathgasm was puerile, juvenile and dumb then Goremageddon will melt your face off and force you to barricade yourself inside, safe with some Terrance Malik and Coldplay.”

Now.  This is funny to me for a few reasons, the first being that the band centered in Deathgasm was fucking Trivium, arguably a shitty band.  Now, you’re making fun of people for listening to Coldplay but the hardest shit you could attach to your movie was Trivium?  The cognitive dissonance at play here, is nothing short of astonishing.

Also – what are you, Donald Trump?  Why do you have to talk about your latest accomplishment by taking a stab at the people who didn’t like your first piece?  Me thinks buddy has some variety of insecurity issue.

Seriously.  Fuck this guy and his fucking garbage films.

After we posted our article, we were informed that this is not the first time Howden has freaked out over journalists not liking his work, and previous threatened a male critic and then deleted his account when he realized how batshit he looked.

Threatening journalists because they didn’t like your film is #tr00kvlt.

7.  Fentanyl.

This last one is going to be a bit of a serious note because on December 4, 2016 DIAG lost a member of our family to Fentanyl, a wonderful woman, a talented nurse, a long time fan of our site, and a metal head.  May she rest in power.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid drug that has found it’s way into almost every recreational drug in British Columbia, and likely a whole lot of other places.  It’s a powerful drug that is killing everyone from seasoned heroin addicts to the girl next door who does a few lines at the bar with her friends.  In BC, the fentanyl epidemic is now at a crisis point.  In 2016, the DIAG crew buried 4 people due to this beast.  4 people.  4 friends.  4 members of our family.

You know what sucks?  Going to funerals for people who aren’t even 30.

People who haven’t even experienced the beauty and the darkness of life.

All I can say is that if you’re going to use, test your product, get a naloxone kit – (Towards the Heart is a great resource), and party safe. Fentanyl was found to be in 89% of all drugs surveyed by the Vancouver Coastal Health authority and this includes everything. Cocaine, MDMA, meth, ketamine, and even marijuana.
No one deserves to die this way.
NO ONE.

FUCK FENTANYL.
FUCK STIGMA.
DRUG ADDICTS ARE PEOPLE.
ADDICTION IS A DISEASE.

And for Tyler and Lynds, the beautiful faces we have lost, may you both rest in power.

Please be safe this 2017, and DIAG welcomes the fuckery that is yet to come.

Happy New Year!