To quote Revelation 6:12, "I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red."
Because the end times just weren't coming soon enough, Avril Lavigne and Nickelback's Chad Kroeger have announced that they are engaged to be married after a secret six-month courtship.
Congratulations?
Yes, congratulations to Avril Lavigne, who managed to find someone that is more of a non-person than Brody Jenner. And congratulations to our ears, which will no longer be Nickelback's dedicated wang holster.
Let's celebrate what is most likely true love. After all, their shared nauseous brand of mediocrity is a lot more than most couples have in common. Of course, it's possible that they've been paired by some Canadian version of the Illuminati (the Illuminat-eh?) to finally exact revenge on the U.S. for that French and Indian War mess.
Then again, maybe they've got the ultimate diabolical duet on the way in the form of parenting the Antichrist. We'll find out if they register at Bed Bath & Beyond for enough candles to make a giant pentagram in the center of Stonehenge. Until then, dull the pain by thinking about five other combinations that are equally horrid.
Diarrhea-Flavored Mouthwash
You wake up with a foul taste in your mouth. "No problem," you say. "I'll just swish and spit with that new mouthwash that arrived at my doorstep unexpectedly." The trouble: Not only is the bottle not PBA-free, but the mouthwash is diarrhea-flavored. All natural, too.
An improbable nightmare scenario? Perhaps. But think about this: Avril Lavigne and Nickelback may very well be intending to have children. Imagine an entire army of horribly banal singers, flooding the market with their dross. No twist of the radio dial will ever offer an escape. This is a dystopian future in which Gavin DeGraw becomes the voice of a generation.
A Walk-in Microwave With a Lock on the Outside
It seemed like a good investment at the time. After all, sometimes you want to microwave like a dozen bowls of soup at once. So you got that walk-in microwave that the salesman sold you on. Then while you were trying to figure out how to set the clock, the installation guy put in a lock ... on the outside.
Now every time you want to heat up a mess of mozzarella sticks, you run the risk that a breeze through your open window's gonna slam the door shut and one of the neighborhood kids will think it's a hoot to fire up the popcorn preset.
Avril Lavigne and Nickelback are the same way. You think, "I just want something cheap and easy that I don't have to think about so much." And you let down your guard. The next thing you know, everything is awash in a dull amber glow and your brain is sizzling down your ear lobes. These two are dangerous enough on their own. But together, they are a musical Superfund site.
Tom's Espadrilles Made of Broken Glass
"How cute," you tell yourself at the store. Even though the autumn approaches, it'll be an endless summer for your feet if you start wearing a pair of Tom's espadrilles. But these are no ordinary espadrilles. These are made from shards of broken glass. No one knows the origin of this glass, but the stenciled measurement lines on the pieces hint at used medical equipment.
And after you buy a pair for yourself, a second pair is strapped to the feet of a poor African child, who now, on top of war, a lack of clean drinking water, disease and a criminally low life expectancy, must walk everywhere with shards of glass cutting into her feet. Nice going, Ace.
When you listen to Avril Lavigne and Nickelback, it's not a victimless crime. Other people can overhear their aural swill, oftentimes without warning or time for ample preparation. Each is bad enough alone. But try Avril and Nickelback songs at the same time and you'll start trying to kick yourself in the throat with your glass shoe. The world is too full of pain to bear whatever might come out of these singing barfbags' union.
A Cat That Smokes Cloves
When a cat moves into your home, you get a judgmental vagrant who shits in the corner on the regular and gets pissy when you're slow to open the latest can of stinky shit fuel. The pretension and odor are bad enough on their own, but things would get a lot worse if your cat began smoking cloves.
At first, you might be charmed by its tiny porkpie hat or the way your cat sniffs at you dismissively as you toil away on the People magazine crossword puzzle. But the second time you wake up to find the cat sitting on your chest, its glowing eyes and the embers of the clove cutting through putrid smoke, you realize that the only choice is to grab your go-bag and escape into the Everglades.
Avril Lavigne and Nickelback are good for a laugh. They're both terrible ... Haha. And yet they have an insidious way of coming into our lives and laying waste to the peace and equilibrium that was once the hallmark of our days. How are we to believe in democracy when this is what the people's choice hath wrought? How do we keep up the search for meaning in life when life shouts back through our ear buds that it is entirely devoid of meaning? Giggle if you want. Scoff at these two. But every time Avril Lavigne and Nickelback kiss, the wings of an angel are ripped out by the roots.
A Piranha Attack in Front of All Your Exes
Time has passed since you last saw your exes. You aren't as lithe as you once were. Like the rest of you, your body has started to settle. But there you are at the public pool, brave enough (or hopeless enough) to dare wearing a faded swimsuit from years ago. You're up on the low dive when you look out and see that all of your exes are gathered poolside, whispering and giggling.
Nothing a perfectly executed jackknife can't fix. The world seems to pause as you hang at the top of your dive, pulling your knee to your chest and hearing something in your aging body pop. The expressions on your exes' faces change. And even though their exceedingly good looking and successful new lovers are by their sides, regret begins to register on their faces. Then you hit the water and realize all too late that the water is full of piranhas, who (though they aren't happy about it) are dedicated to eating you alive in the most painful way possible.
That we know of the engagement of Avril Lavigne and Nickelback is our great shame. We learned this news not through friends or Facebook stalking, but because, through our own willfull ignorance, these are still successful musicians. They've each been popular for a decade and when we see this pair walking around together, emitting smug fumes of annihilation, it is a reminder of all our collective failures of the past ten years. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Things were supposed to get better.
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