I have made a decision. I prefer FML to MLIA because I prefer schadenfreude to other people’s ennui.

Not that I’ve run into particularly many heated debates on the matter, but I’ve noticed that most people tend to have a pretty definite opinion on which site they prefer, and, for whatever reason, seem fairly resolute about their choice. So I figured I should make up my mind on the matter (because what else would I do with my time as a first-year college student?), and as it turned out, it was harder to do than it sounds! Not because I was terribly torn between the two sites. More because I didn’t really care. When I learned about Fuck My Life way back in March or whenever, I read it religiously for about two weeks and then didn’t go back for a few months. It’s hilarious, but it definitely gets boring once you catch on to the general trends. Then I heard about My Life Is Average, and thought that maybe that would be more interesting, but I couldn’t get into it. Some of it’s quite funny, but because its spin is that life is average as opposed to hilariously shitty, some of it tends to have more of the “you had to be there” feel of an inside joke than it does the “oh man, did you hear what happened to so-and-so?”. FML is like those celebrity magazines you see when you’re checking out at the grocery store. You know you’re better than reading them, but that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy how juicy it is.

And that’s about all I got. This post is the result of me not having updated in a while, recuperating from the stress of finals week, and waiting at the airport for my flight back home. You get my opinion on stupid time-waster websites. That are hilarious.

I’m going to be incredibly original today and announce that I have a bone to pick with Facebook. Not necessarily Facebook itself, per se. I love Facebook. I mean, I’ve complained about Facebook in the past on this blog, but honestly, if Facebook was heroin, I’d be pretty screwed over. However, my current complaint about Facebook doesn’t actually have anything to do with Facebook, but rather its community.

You see, way back in ye olden days of Facebook (roughly two or two and a half years ago), one of my favorite parts of Facebook was running around looking for groups with funny titles and messages, like “Back in my day, evolution simply meant a more badass Pokemon”, “Automatic Doors Make Me Feel Like A Jedi”, “I Will Judge You If You Use Comic Sans MS”, “If you ever had a near orgasm from seeing the green check on WebAssign”, and my personal favorite back when it was a little more topical, “Fuck Iraq, We Gotta Catch Voldemort!”. And this isn’t to say that people aren’t making funny groups anymore. Last week I found one called “When I Die I Give My Friends Permission To Change My Status To ‘Is Dead’”. That makes me chuckle. But you know what doesn’t make me chuckle? When people can’t keep their Facebook groups and their Facebook pages straight.

See, you become a member of a group, but you become a fan of a page. Here’s an example I found roughly 20 seconds before I started writing this post (just to give you an insight into how the creative process tends to work on this blog). I found a page called “I change my date on homework so it looks like I did it earlier.” Now, that’s pretty funny, and I like that someone made this observation, but then they went about it the wrong way. This is the title of something that should be a group. Not a page. You can’t become a fan of I change my date on homework so it looks like I did it earlier. That’s grammatically incorrect! You can become a fan of changing my date on homework so it looks like I did it earlier. Or you could have made the whole thing a group!

Basically, I’d like to lay down  a general rule of thumb that I’d like to see adopted. If it’s the name of a page, it has to function as a noun. Yes, this means you have to dig out those arcane grammar skills you’ve tried to suppress the memory of and remember how to make noun clauses and how to use gerunds and all that fancy stuff, but, really, the alternative is a world where you log on to Facebook and read that one of your friends has become a fan of “I use my cell phone to see in the dark”. You can’t be a fan of that! That’s a sentence, not a noun! And what’s even worse is when you read something like “So-and-so became a fan of ‘We used to talk for hours and now we never even say hi’”. Come on, even if that followed the rule of thumb I just made up, how the hell could you be a fan of that? “Oh man, I love alienating people!”

So, to the peoples of Facebook who make pages for people to become fans of, learn what the word “fan” means, and learn how grammar works.

That’s about all I have to say about that. Back to 30 Rock and Spanish homework. Although I’d like to use this opportunity (“opportunity” meaning “I actually updated recently”) to inform that probably incredibly small demographic of people who a) read my blog, b) read A Softer World, and c) want a wallpaper based on this particular A Softer World to know that I actually updated that oft-neglected portion of the site with such a thing to fit your needs! Enjoy it and distress people in your immediate vicinity who glance over at your desktop!

Also, I feel the need to share this with everybody I can!

And that’s pretty much what Facebook is.

Like some people, I’m a pretty big fan of Twitter. Like a far greater number of people, I’m not a very big fan of doing laundry.

Let me share a story that manages to connect the two.

When I started college, one of the many new things I had to get used to was doing laundry. I’ve since gotten over it really being any sort of a hassle, but somewhere along the line, I managed to draw a new personal tradition out of it. For whatever reason, every time I’ve done laundry, I tweeted something about it that included the word “fucking.” Now, granted, this is not a very nice word. Most people should not say this word or should at least take some care in using it because a) most people don’t find it particularly amusing, and b) that pesky roughly age 13-17 demographic finds it entirely too amusing. But I felt like the daunting task of having to do laundry did something to deserve it. Sorting colors, waiting for a dryer to open up, swiping your ID or procuring an obscene amount of quarters. Not pleasant stuff. Of course, now it’s just funny. Especially in how a few of my friends have adopted this habit as well. I can earnestly say that nothing warms my heart in quite the same way as seeing someone else tweet something along the lines of “Time to do some fucking laundry! #fuckinglaundry”

Yes, that’s right. It even has its own hashtag now. It’s perfectly acceptable either to throw it in at the end, or to just incorporate it into your tweet, like one of my friends did rather expertly with “What time is it? #fuckinglaundry time!” Those are the rules. Either syntax is perfectly acceptable! Why would I tell you that they’re the rules? Because this is obviously a thing that needs to catch on on a larger scale! True, my blog doesn’t really get enough traffic (at least outside of you know what) to start a social revolution (Twitter revolution?), but it’s as good a place as any to get the word out! Or, worst case scenario, to share an amusing anecdote to serve as a filler post.

Now go. You know what you must do. Unless you don’t have twitter, then you should maybe click on a bunch more of my posts and bump up my stats a little bit to make me feel better.

I’m not really a huge Weezer fan, although I couldn’t begin to tell you why. I usually enjoy them when they come on shuffle or if I stumble into a new song of theirs, but I care barely get myself to listen to an entire album by them. Now, your response to that could be some of the typical post-music industry “the album is dead!” fluff, but I still think the album is the best way to enjoy a musical artist, and when their albums are only 10 songs or so, like Weezer tends to do, not being able to sit through it all isn’t a terribly great thing. Now, I haven’t gotten a chance to ever listen to The Blue Album or Pinkerton, which are supposed to be really, really good, and have managed to only have listened to Weezer’s Make Believe, which I am led to believe is the “bad” one, and The Green Album, which is also supposed to be really good, and now their new album, Raditude.

First and foremost, given my already “I should like them, but I don’t know why I don’t” take on Weezer, picking up their newest effort and finding an album named “Raditude” with what appears to be a dog trying its best to be a kangaroo on it, I wasn’t expecting much of my impressions to change. And they didn’t. Raditude is like every other time I’ve listened to a Weezer album: there were a handful of songs I really got into, and the rest of the album left me somewhere between tapping my foot along to the music and unenthusiastic. Or hit or miss, in terms that actually make sense. Except the cover doesn’t make sense. I feel that’s an okay thing for me to do.

Like I alluded to, I’m basically a Weezer fan to the extent that when I think they have a good song, it is a very good song. Album opener and lead single “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To” is like 98% absolutely delicious. It’s not perfect, but the shimmying acoustic guitar and general poppiness of the tune creates a wonderful contrast with the bittersweet lyrics.  The “Then the conversation stopped, and I looked down at my feet/I was next to you and you were right there next to me” pre-chorus captures the spirit of that wonderfully awkward moment of near-flirtation outlined rather thoroughly by the rest of the chorus, which is also the title. Basically. The song stays musically poppy and cheery as the lyrics descend into the trouble later down the road, but keeps drawing back on that plea to break the hesitation, and the end result is oh so enjoyable.

As you may have guessed by now, I liked this one song a lot more than the rest of the album, but that isn’t necessarily to say that the other nine tracks aren’t any good. On the contrary, I rather liked “The Girl Got Hot”, “Put Me Back Together”, and, being the pessimist I am, thought the miserably depressing closer “I Don’t Want To Let You Go” was beautifully and painfully human, which is one of Rivers Cuomo’s greatest strengths as a songwriter. His ability to hold up a mirror to the forcibly hidden awkward aspects of the human condition is worth really reading into the lyrics for alone. The problem is that he doesn’t always do this. Another thing about the album that I couldn’t quite get into, and maybe I just need to be more into Weezer to really get this sort of thing, but, much like how the album’s named “Raditude”, the whole thing sounds like it’s trying really hard to be hipper and younger than it is. So many lyrics are dedicated to partying and dance floors and what have you that I can’t tell where the irony ends and where the descent into the dog pouncing like a kangaroo meandering fluff begins, and it gets tiring.

Except aside from the tracks that are actual duds, “Can’t Stop Partying” just come off as too morbid musically to convey much of the lyrical irony it needs and the Eastern-tinged Hallmark card that is “Love Is The Answer” is a paradox demanding both an acquired taste and burnt taste buds, none of this is damning enough to actually make me want to call it bad. It’s more like how the album can reach such musical heights with the thematic lows of “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To” and “I Don’t Want To Let You Go”, that the rest of the album has a hard time holding itself up in comparison, even when it seems fairly good. There’s an inherent issue in how it tends to feel more  listenable than it does enjoyable, but that’s what iTunes and YouTube are for. If you haven’t listened to “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To”, you’re missing out. As for the other half-hour of the album, depends how much you like modern, poppy Weezer. I mean, sure, it wants you to, but it clearly doesn’t have all night.

As used as I am
To ruining my plans,
Imagining meaning that can’t exist,
The underburdened existentialist,
Aspiring nihilist narcissist,
And finding patterns within nervous ticks,

I’m done with that routine
Of tripping on ennui
And turned around to fix the last four hours,
A perfect symbol of the last four years,
And found the plant I imagined as ours,
A perfect arrangement of angled mirrors.

Having been within sight of why
I sailed into that stormy night
Still sans knowledge of what,
Or of how to sail,
Or swim,
For that matter,
Or any idea of how the hell to understand semaphore.

That rowboat I took out to sea
Was gone when I came to,
And after days of just not avoiding the beach enough,
Trying to find where I lost it,
Trying to find how I had lost it,
And delusional about finding it,
I finally had the sobering experience
Of being informed there was never actually a boat at all,
Though we’d probably both have liked one,
And I’d understand how the hell I got on this island anyway.

All the same,
I appreciate your attempt at talking to me in semaphore,
And I guess I should be thankful
That your red flags were white.

- – -

I don’t know if this is a draft or a poem I’m just not terribly certain about, but, for the former, I rarely ever go back and revise unfinished poetry anyway, and, for the latter, I need to update the blog at some point in time. Also for the latter, putting poetry up on this blog, regardless of my suspicions about its quality, does offer me the opportunity to get some input on it (theoretically). Anybody reading this happen to be feeling particularly critical today? Any thoughts?

So I’d like to throw poetry and such up here more often, except the caveat there is that I actually have to write poetry and such more often. The workaround I came up with about a year ago was to write a weekly haiku, although the “weekly” part was predictably short lived, and the “haiku” part lost its appeal to me. Not that I have anything against haikus, I just feel like I could be a little more creative.

Anyway, hopefully you enjoyed my latest depressing poem. If not, here’s a sharp contrast for your enjoyment, written by a friend of mine, which I assured her I would link to and promptly forgot to do so for a month. I imagine it’s still topical.

That’s all. I’m going to try going to sleep before midnight for once. I hear that’s good for you.

In my English class today, my professor briefly ripped on the mortality of rock and roll. Because we were talking about Oscar Wilde. Anyway, her quick joke about rock and roll music being middle aged, citing The Rolling Stones a being more of a brand than actual rock, reminded me about all those other signs of mortality in the music scene. Most discussions about the death of the music industry tend to be about the death of the album, or the death of the record label, and so on and so forth, but very little seems to be about the death of the band itself. Let’s look at three recent-ish examples of this: the “wait, they’re not actually dead yet?” band, the “oh my god, they’re finally dead?” band, and the “is nothing sacred anymore please oh please stay dead” band.

• The “wait, they’re not actually dead yet?” band

The most recent of all the following examples (I’m in college, guys. It’s hard to stay punctual! P.S. Scribblenauts first impressions coming soon!), apparently Steven Page left Aerosmith earlier this week or last week or something (interestingly enough, to work on “the brand of myself – Brand Tyler”). Well, since I couldn’t actually remember when it was, I Googled it, and since then the statements have been revised to say the opposite, that Steven Tyler’s “not quitting Aerosmith”. So… there you go. I mean, sure, from what I understand, they’re still a good show, but I’m reasonably certain they’re not really doing anything new and exciting in the music industry. I mean, their last album of original material was released in 2001, and Wikipedia claims they’re working on a new album for 2010, but are people terribly excited about that? Will a single song off of that album really be incorporated into their canon?

• The “oh my god, they’re finally dead?” band

So Oasis broke up. Noel quit the band, and then Liam announced Oasis “is no longer”, so, yeah, it sounds like that’s about it for Oasis. Although apparently this isn’t anything terribly new for them. I wasn’t really around during their heyday or anything, but from what I’ve picked up on, the two of them kind of hate each other. So who knows if they’re coming back or not. I just think it’s interesting that even though they’re mostly notable for their early 90s material, they actually do have new stuff from last year or so on the radio. So they’re somewhat topical? I guess?

• The “is nothing sacred anymore please oh please stay dead” band

So apparently Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson tried to pull off a Sublime reunion. Yeah. What can you say about that? You know, aside from how singer/guitarist/creative force/frontman Bradley Nowell died thirteen years ago, and it’s kind of hard to really pull together a legitimate reunion when you have to replace all those things. And, also, the legal rights. This one was kind of silly and almost worrying, but I guess it could have been worse. This Rome Ramirez guy doesn’t really sound too much like Bradley, but, all things considered, the music didn’t actually sound that bad (as I can tell based on the three or four songs I saw on YouTube), and trying to take Nowell’s place probably took some serious balls. Still, that being said, it’s a good thing a judge banned the new lineup from actually performing as Sublime, because, well, it isn’t. It’d be like if Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl grabbed a new singer/guitarist and claimed Nirvana was reuniting, except Sublime wasn’t really as good or important as Nirvana. Yup. I went there. Let’s see the fight in the comments, people! Or just comments, really. Or at least some views on an article I’ve written that isn’t that Pokemon thing that’s gotten 2000 more hits than my next most popular article. Seriously. The internet is weird.

I’m not really the person to bother to stay particularly up to date on the happenings on the internet, so for all I know, this might be old news, but a few days ago I rediscovered the joy of Mystery Google. Almost. The concept is simple and wonderful enough. It looks like Google, you type in your search term like in Google, except the results you get are what the person before you searched for. It’s a great concept, and I rather like it because if you keep using it for ten minutes or so, you notice enough trends and actually walk away with a rather naked glimpse at humanity.

I first discovered Mystery Google about a month or two ago, and typed in those normal, silly searches you used the first time someone told you about Google, like “hello”, and “funny”. Then when you get the search results for things like “<O.O>”, you realize that what’s even more fun that getting the previous person’s results is that the next person gets yours. Naturally, I typed in things like “the inescapable futility of existence” (and did some shameless self-advertising by searching for this blog), but lost interest pretty quickly, without paying much attention to what I was getting.

A few days ago, being the good college students that we are, we were messing around with Mystery Google, and this is when I started to really pay attention to what other people were searching for. For every handful of search terms most likely done by people showing Mystery Google to their friends and pissing them off with things like “Mary likes monkey balls”, we got the occasional “You are a good person.” Briefly motivated by this, we decided to try our hand at setting up positive searches for people too. We typed in “People need you.” We got search results for “edward cullen doggy style”. This was short lived.

So I guess you can kind of learn a few things about people from things like Mystery Google. People enjoy making fun of other people, occasionally inspiring them, and hot fictitious vampire sex.

Enlightening!

In between yesterday and today, I have actually seen the wedding episode. I haven’t caught up any further than that, but I felt I should respond to what I wrote yesterday in light of having actually seen the episode people have been watching six seasons of The Office for.

Well, I know semi-reviewing a three week old episode is kind of silly, so I’ll be brief. It was better than I thought it would be. It was actually pretty funny and hardly boring at all, even if it wasn’t quite as funny as the show might have made it in its prime. And even if they stole the whole “let’s have a different wedding by ourselves away from how terrible this wedding everybody thinks will be the real one is going” from How I Met Your Mother two years ago.

That’s about all I feel like writing about. I’m sure you’ve seen it by now. I’m a college student now. I don’t have time for this!

So… I guess that’s it? How have you been?

I’ve watched the American version of The Office from day one, and watched it religiously. I saw every episode from that initial, “oh ho ho, Jim put Dwight’s stapler in Jello, but he’s in love with an engaged woman, oh dearie me!” pilot episode, to the “Jim kissed Pam!” second season finale, to the “Jim and Pam are finally going to go out!” third season finale, to the “Jim and Pam actually are going out!” fourth season premiere, to the “Jim proposed to Pam!” fifth season premiere, to the “Pam’s pregnant!” fifth season finale.

I still haven’t seen the wedding episode.

It’s ironic that I’ve followed the show, admittedly mostly because of these two characters, for so long, only to stop watching it right at the episode the show’s audience has literally waited six years for. But wait!, you might be thinking, I actually read your blog quite a bit and now that you’re in college now! You don’t always have time to rejoice in the merriment that is a television programme! And to that, dear figurative devoted reader, I respond with true, but the thing aired weeks ago. I’m sure I had time somewhere between now and then to catch up to this moment so eagerly and patiently waited for. There’s just not as much reason to. The fact of the matter is, like I said around the end of the last season, the show has been showing its age, and it’s only getting older.

The season premiere was funnier than I expected, even if it did absolutely nothing to significantly develop the story. While each episode after that did the opposite and worked on very significant changes to the story, and made the show less and less funny. Jim and Michael both being manager didn’t make things any more entertaining, and on the contrary made them worse. Like I’ve also said, every season of The Office, Jim’s character becomes less and less likable. As one of the office’s new bosses, Jim is just as much of a moron as Michael, except he’s even more awkward to watch.

Granted, I’ll still catch up on the show eventually, but it’s hard to feel like doing this with the show’s long decline into boredom. I honestly don’t know how much longer the show can last. The initial premise the show began with obviously had to change. I mean, six seasons of Jim being in love with Pam who’s engaged to Roy while they pull hijinks of all various manners on Dwight while Michael makes life a living hell for everyone who isn’t the viewer wouldn’t have been any better. But those two seasons were far and away the show’s best years. I’ll even say that the third season was wonderful too, and was a good example of how the show could evolve and age well. Right now, however, it’s not aging well. It’s just getting boring.