New York City, Here I Come!

This is the obligatory post letting all the peeps know that I will be absent for most of the week. I will be in the Big Apple, seeing the sights and going to a big concert (the main highlight). No posts until I return, so take the time to catch up! Until next time...

Play us off, Fleetwood Mac!

Yeaaaa!

The long-awaited trailer to the new Silent Hill movie is now here!

Minor complaint: the effects look a little off, but other than that, it looks great! Can't wait 'til October! Hell yeah, midnight showing (if there is one)!

I've been having a blah week (full of no-fun anxiety), but this has made up for it.

*goes to look at various Silent Hill message boards*

Nothing will ever please the hardcore fans. Reason #153 Why I'm No Longer A Member of A Silent Hill Message Board.

A short list of books I pre-ordered on my e-reader...

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
Eight Girls Taking Pictures by Whitney Otto
A Novel Way to Die (A Black Cat Bookshop Mystery #2) by Ali Brandon

Hell yeah! Can't wait for these, especially the last one. I'm a sucker for goofy armchair mysteries.

I may add Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue to the list, but I want to do more research first.

What's with this nonsense?

I don't know if y'all are having this problem, but for some strange reason, certain parts of my posts will have a white background, like I highlighted it. It has happened here and over on Jupiter_Nova. I apologize for not spotting those errors earlier (if you've seen them at my blogs).

But this has happened too many times for it be a strange-ass error on my part. So I ask you, the programmers of this fine blogging establishment... if there is anything you can do on your end to fix this problem, it would be greatly appreciated.

Time for another "Top 5 on Friday!"

Over at Music Memoirs, the hostess asks everyone what five albums they would buy if they had the money.

Here is my answer!

1. Music from Big Pink by The Band
2. Quixotic by Martina Topley-Bird
3. Mindy Smith by Mindy Smith
4. Funk or Walk by the Brides of Funkenstein
5. Born to Die by Lana del Ray (quit yer heckling, I like "Summertime Sadness")

A future plan I got cooking...

As y'all know, I've been talking about how much I wanted to find full-time employment. I initially halted the search after I got caught up in my friend's wedding (yeah, apparently being a bridesmaid does mean you put aside some life stuff for a while!). Now with the trip to New York coming up, I have a feeling I won't do much in job-hunting until I get back. That won't be until early August. I hate to keep putting it on hold, but I don't have much of a choice.

As I watch my bank account dwindle and not replenish as fast as I've been used to, it dawns on me that I need to make more money (only enough to live, no stock markets or gambling for me) and find a job to give me security. Right now, I am far from that safe spot. I imagine a lot of people are in that position right now (why thanks, do-nothing Congress!), so my complaint is not that unique.

I have talked about getting a new job in the past, but I didn't mean it enough. I hope that this time, not only do I mean it, but it results in new employment.

This one goes out...

to my best friend and her fiancé, who just got married today.

Y'all are a wonderful couple. Continue being awesome, you crazy kids.

The Future of Music Consumption Is Rife with Arguments, Apparently

So, some (old but) big news on the Interwebs regard an NPR intern basically confessing that almost all the music she has on her computer wasn't purchased. She talks about how she works at radio stations, ripping the CDs that surround her, and ripping albums she borrows from friends. And of course, the bugaboo, she downloads whatever she can’t get a hold of. The comments were flooded with people claiming she and many others like her are nothing more than thieves; while some defended her and called for everyone to get with the future. So, our future is no longer buying our music?

I don’t have a problem with people loaning their CDs out to people. I do that all the time with my sister and my friends. Didn't people do this with vinyl records and cassette tapes? Look, I may be a quarter-century-old, but I know this phenomenon ain't new.

Before I go further, I need to admit to my class privilege: I still live with my family, so I don’t pay much in rent and bills. With this, I’m able to buy a lot of my music. The only time I download free stuff is bootlegs and long out-of-print albums that are VERY HARD to find (e.g. the albums are only available on vinyl from Japan [oh hai Plastics]). Because I can afford to buy my music, it's likely why I take issue to those who download everything for free. I like to support the musicians whenever I can, even if it means that the record company takes a larger cut. It ain't the band's fault that's the way things are.

I do have some issues with people that admit to downloading everything, citing that the record company gets most of the cut anyway. Okay great idea, let's deprive the musicians what little they would've received anyway! F*** the establishment! This is a seriously flawed argument. Yeah, the music industry is seriously broken as all get out and is refusing to change with the rest of the world. That's no excuse to basically just steal and be proud of it or think you're making a change in the industry. The entitlement is quite awful, frankly. Most of these musicians aren't working for free. They need food and health insurance like the rest of us.

Yet, let's take a gander at the other side, those who like to buy their music and have physical copies. Once again, it all goes back to the money. They have it, therefore they spend it. They see these youngsters (including myself) and think we are nothing more than greedy and entitled jerks. Well, this attitude is quite entitled and greedy, to be honest. So yeah, no one wins here.

I guess my main problem with this whole situation is the entitlement. The old-schoolers with their infinite monies and the new-schoolers with their l33t downloading and torrenting skills. No one is admitting to those hard facts. The older folks don’t want to talk about class and money privileges, it’s just easier to call the kids immature and entitled. As for my generation, we have computers and infinite resources for free music, we don’t want to consider that yeah it is still stealing no matter how we attempt to explain it away, it’s just easier to call the older folks behind the times and not willing to accept reality.

And you know what? The main villain in all this, a corrupt music system, is still winning. If we continue to be at war with each other, we will never see past our own prejudices and when we find ourselves with stricter Internet privileges and exorbitant priced albums, we have no one to blame but ourselves. (Well, that, plus the price of living and paying wages are so skewed now that it warrants a comedic sketch.)

So essentially? Everyone, put down your arms. Own up to your problems and work together. We can have a future full of cheap and free music if we just shut up about the other side for a minute. Because if this economy doesn't recover soon, we all won't have money for anything and the argument about free music will be the least of our problems.

I had a nice, silly post ready to go...

And Blogger ate it up. I managed to save it, after searching for a solution for about twenty minutes. It's too much work to fix the post at this time, so I will fix it all in good time. Probably not this week, due to my friend's wedding this weekend.

Either way, I'll just move on and work on some reviews for my other blog. Check soon for the inaugural Jupiter_Nova review!

25 Things You (Likely) Don't Know About Me

~~

1. I am the only person amongst my friends and family that hated Sucker Punch.

2. I air-guitar left-handed, yet I’m right-handed.

3. My liquors of choice are rum and whiskey. Vodka and tequila, no thanks!

4. I love Peter Gabriel solo more than in Genesis, yet I love Phil Collins in Genesis more than solo. (Bonus Genesis factoid: I prefer the Hackett/Banks/Rutherford/Collins era [Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering]).

5. If I could dress as one musician for my stage costume, I want to dress like Phil Manzanera from Roxy Music’s performance of “Ladytron” on The Old Grey Whistle Test. Those glasses are f***ing awesome.

6. I would love to learn how to play both banjo and bass.

7. According to my friends and family, I’m excellent at gift-giving.

8. I taught myself how to write (in general), braid, and juggle.

9. Before becoming a serious writer; I used to write Looney Tunes and Silent Hill fan fiction as a hobby. And no, none of it was sleazy. Or can be found on the Internet.

10. The books I have successfully recommended to customers are The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka followed by Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (5 times for each of them).

11. Thanks to my sister, I’m now a hot tea drinker. My preference is green tea with honey.

12. I became a feminist when I was 21.

13. As of today, I have been published 3 times.

14. I was told once by a creative writing classmate that my writing wasn't good because the language wasn't "profound" nor were the words "12th grade level". Hey buddy, Hemingway on Line 4 for you.

15. I would like to write lyrics for a rock band.

16. If I could travel back into time to see one concert, it would be the entire US Festival in 1982. (Second place goes to Talking Heads in Tokyo, Japan in 1981).

17. Regarding item 16, I have been told by a few that this was an excellent choice.

18. I'm planning to cosplay as the Nostalgia Critic at an anime convention.

19. I am starting to collect nail polishes. God help me.

20. My best friend's upcoming wedding will be the first wedding I will ever go to. And also the first where I am part of the bridal party.

21. I'm pretty superstitious. I believe in wearing and carrying lucky things (like rings and jewelry), looking out for lucky numbers in things (like lotteries), and in omens. However, I don't believe in astrology.

22. When I was a kid, I wanted to be either a meteorologist or an animation director; almost just as bad as I want to be a writer now.

23. I'm really sensitive to the smell of house paint. It makes me gag.

24. I started calling microwaveable bacon "lazy bacon", beginning a trend in my house. My parents even list it as "lazy bacon" on their grocery lists!

25. I have named all my fountain pens after British writers. The Pelikan is Angela (after Angela Carter), the Waterman is George (after George Eliot), and the Retro 51 is Brian (after Brian Jacques).

On the "bath salts" incidents...

Warning: this post and news links contain some violent details, reader discretion is advised. 

(I originally wrote this in the wake of the incidents, but forgot to post it. It is slightly dated for that reason, but still worth talking about.)

To be honest, I didn't know what to say or think about all the past reports of men (two of them were possibly high on so-called "bath salts") who committed great destruction upon themselves or others. Well, other than "Good God, that's horrifying!"

That was until everyone I know (and I do mean everyone) started making zombie jokes (with the solitary exception of my little sister, who continues to remain a badass).

At first, I didn't know how to react. To be honest, I never considered "zombie apocalypse" when I read the stories (see first paragraph for the initial reaction). After a while, as it all sunk in, the zombie jokes started to get to me. I had trouble figuring out why. After reading about it on ONTD_Political, even when the posters' feelings were similar to mine, I couldn't find my reason. I thought about it all day yesterday. And then it hit me: no one talked about the victim (in this case, I'm referring to the homeless man that was attacked in Florida). The guy's life has changed dramatically and, in all honesty, it could be something he may never truly recover from. The pain, in both its physical and psychological forms, I cannot even begin to fathom. If anything, I hope he gets all the help he needs and lives out the rest of his life in a safe place.

~

I know humor is used to help cope with a serious event, but this doesn't seem like the right time. It erases the fact there were people seriously injured and killed. It deflects conversation about "bath salts", a serious and dangerous street drug, especially its effects on people. Those are conversations we need to have, but we are too scared to. Instead, we resort to tasteless jokes that only skirt the real issues. We forget that there are grieving families and mortally-wounded people.
 
Have I lost some respect for those who made the jokes? I won't lie, yes I have. What I hope for is for these people to examine their thoughts and reread the stories (if they are triggered by extreme violence, then I don't want them to do that to themselves).

I will link to the news stories so you can read them for yourselves. I combed through them to make sure pictures weren't posted of the man's injuries. But sadly, I cannot assure you that it will remain that way. Exercise extreme caution, my friends. There are jerks on the Internet and the comments sections are to be avoided.

To my friends who read this and get mad at me for me being mad at them, please read the entry again. And no, I'm not a politically-correct, oversensitive, bleeding-heart liberal. I am, however, a liberal with a sense of humor who knows when not to make inappropriate jokes. There is a difference, y'all.

What I've Been Up To...

Hello again, peeps! Welcome to July, where your electric bills will rise to ridiculous levels and the sunscreen is your best friend. May the A/Cs always work and the cold water be plentiful for you all. And for those currently experiencing the cooler seasons... enjoy it while it lasts. It will be your turn soon. *insert evil laughter*

One big thing I got done today is book the hotel my sister and I will be staying at in New York later this month. That pretty much leaves any last-minute things to do (like get together toiletries and packing) before the big day. Also found some cool free apps that will help me and my sister get around the city.

The original big day is about twelve days away, working on some gift-buying (and making!) for my best friend's wedding. I got my dress back and got together all the makeup and accessories I'm gonna need. I have that entire weekend off, so I can recover and help do last-minute stuff.

Got a long to-do list, along with what I listed above, of things to get done this week. Two of them include blog posts for Jupiter_Nova and two more posts here.

Sorry for not much else, y'all. Do stay tuned, as always!