Channel V and Modern Music - An Infinite Possiblogities Rant

Sorry, but there's not going to be much of an intro today. I hope you can keep up.

So the cafe at uni has recently had Austar installed and as I result I'm constantly exposed to the music channel known as Channel V. Seeing as how I see the damn show almost every day I thought I'd discuss Channel V and the current music scene in general. So here it goes.

First of all I don't understand the actual attraction of Channel V. What's the difference between it and the radio or an mp3 player? All it does is play the same garbage you can't help but hear every fucking place you go. Just as an example Channel V alone are likely to play certain songs no less than 5 times within 24 hours. If I have to listen to Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas one more time I think I'm going to flip out and murder someone (more on Black Eyed Peas later). In a world where you can listen to whatever you want whenever you want I'm surprised anyone still has time for music channels.

Channel V has this horrible obsession with Pink at the moment as well. They've got this competition running where Pink fans have to prove how devoted they are to Pink in order to win VIP tickets to Pink live. So far all they've proved is how boring and moronic they are. One girl actually just screamed on her vid. This other girl went into all this creepy detail about how she wanted to jump on Pink and hug her and touch her. Coming on a little strong there aren't we? Maybe you should hold off on the whole "I want to wear your skin" shit until after you got her tied up in your basement. And what's with calling Pink the greatest rock star on the planet? Since when? Did she suddenly become more talented overnight or something? Unless you mean another, far more desolate planet...then I MIGHT believe you.

Really though I suppose there's nothing exactly wrong with Channel V. It's using a formula that it's absolutely impossible to fuck up and I'm sure the people who like the music they play are perfectly happy to watch it. Which brings me to my main rant. Modern music is a little stale. I suppose I should say popular modern music because it would be unfair to group a multitude of talented musicians with the mediocre and shitty pop bands. The main problem I have is just how uninspired, predictable and manufactured it sounds. It succeeds because of market research as opposed to musical eptitude, creativity or talent. Just as an example the new Black Eyed Peas song Boom Boom Pow is about as vanilla as urban songs get these days. They make numerous claims in the song to be "very trendy and with it" but really all they're doing is pathetically trying to keep up with what everyone else is doing. Some simple rhyming couplets, a lazy semi-electro style beat, chuck in some product placements and then it's all aboard the auto-tune train for instant hit station. It's like if instant mashed potato was music and all you had to do was add your own name and vola, song made. Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not against auto-tunes or anything here. For example I thought Kanye's 808's and Heartbreak was an excellent album. But the thing is that Kanye put a lot of time and effort into that album. He had a vision and a passion for what he was doing and he went against the grains that he himself had helped to make great. It didn't sound as though his record label gave him a power point presentation showing what music was selling well. And really that's the crux of what I'm saying here. I can potentially like any genre as long as it's presented well. It might be interesting musically or vocally or it might have a great lyrical depth. It's hard to describe what kinda of music I like because I honestly don't know. But I can respect something unique, or even something that isn't unique but done really well. Not knowing what I'll be into next is an exciting adventure and I think that's how artists and record labels should treat their musical ecploits too. Then perhaps we'll start seeing some more fucking depth in this industry.

Welcome to School Girl Internal

Have you ever thought about porn a little too much? I don't mean in the perverted, peeking into the girls change rooms kinda way. I mean in a logical kind of way. For example have you ever thought about how often pornstars get pregnant? I mean their job is to have (usually) unprotected sex on film. Surely with all the masses of porn constantly being made there must be some pregnancy flying around the place. The thing is you never see it though. It's the sex without any consequences...until now. Welcome to School Girl Internal, a porn site with a twist. Basically every plot involves a school girl having casual sex with a neighbour/teacher/football hunk/guy who just happens to be passing by but the twist is that they always end up pregnant. Here's what the site itself has to say...

"There's just something about schoolgirl snatch. Once that hydraulic young pussy clamps tightly around your bareback dick, there's just no getting out! Like a houseguest that gets too comfortable, your cock just doesn't want to leave. No matter what you promised about pulling out. No matter what logic dictates. Once your little head starts doing all the thinking, instincts take over and your dumbass dick won't want to bail till the job is interally done. Why does it have to feel so damn good? This is the question we're asking at SchoolGirlInternal.com!"

So I'm not really sure what they're getting at here. Are they trying to promote safe sex? Are they trying to describe how hot their actresses are? Are they trying to cater to a strange, impregnating school girls perversion? I have no idea. I watched a preview for one and it seems to treat the whole thing like a joke. That's right, let's all just laugh it up as we watch the guy running and screaming after receiving the news several months later. It even plays comical music and speeds up the reel. Aside from that though it's really just the same old routine as far as porn goes. A bit of this. A bit of that. Maybe a tiny bit of the other to cater for those few who are into it and then...Oh my god! It's hilarious. They actually act out the whole "coming inside them" scenario. It's amusing because it is clearly fake. Male porn actors are required to have strong control over that particular bodily function. I particularly love the half-arsed "oh oh OOOOh!" they put in to tell the audience "yes, I am coming now" and then poorly acted response "did...did you just come in me?"

So where am I going with all of this? I dunno. I guess I just wanted to rip on something stupid. In the end I don't really know what to make of it all. It's clear that the porn industry is struggling to come up with believable scenarios for porn and so are instead opting for semi-comedic, Ralph magazine type scenarios where women play a Wheel-of-Fortune game with different positions and what have you. I guess we've all been cracking jokes at porn for so long now that the industry has just gone "Fuck it! Nobody is taking us seriously. Let's just go with the flow and make funny porn."

P.S. Have I become a little too familiar with this industry?

Daria - Review and Rant

Appologies once again for the recent inactivity on my blog. My uni exams are creeping up closer everyday and I fear having to repeat Geology (shudder). Anyway I'm taking a well earned break and I decided to review Daria.

Before moving away to do bigger and better things my good friend Lucy was generous enough to burn me dvd's with all the episodes of Daria on it (including the movies). So first I'd just like to publically thank Lucy for giving me such a wonderful gift (even though I'm certain she doesn't read my blogs anymore). Anyway so Daria is a cartoon series that MTV ran in the 90's as a spin off series to Bevis and Butthead. Daria is one of those curious shows that truely divides people in two. It's like avocado or anchovies. You either think it's the one of the greatest and most beautiful things in existance and it makes your life worth living or you think it is disgusting filth that you have nothing but absolute contempt for. I fall into the first group. I loved this show as a young adolescent and having come back to it I am able to appreciate it on much more complex levels than I ever could as a noobish child.

For those who've never seen Daria it's a show about a teenager called Daria and her life at school as she deals with a slightly disfunctional family, moronic and shallow peers and corrupted and downright mental teachers. Accompanying her through all this is her best friend Jane Lane and the dry and sarcastic witicism the two frequently exchange. It sounds like nothing much and many people have called it just that but really there's a complex soul to the show that makes it one of the most believable depictions of highschool life on the TV. Well developed characters and some truely sharp writing have helped to make this show shine. That and its soundtrack is brimming with 90's alternative music and the like. It's pretty much got it all really. There were times where I laughed so hard and times that I really felt a warm and fuzzy connection with the characters. Especially in the later episodes Daria herself comes across as a very sympathetic character. There's a touch of heart amoungst the black humour and satire that is capable of making you feel for the characters. Now after all that the show does have a few niggles. There is the odd episode in which the writers find themselves straying a little too far from home and into some very rough patches indeed. I found the musical episode to be particularly discomforting. But on the whole the show is pretty rock solid and deserves to be checked out, even if you don't end up liking it.

Now onto one other gripe I have that's not so much with the show itself as it is with the whole fucking world. I watched every episode of this show on windows media player in avi format that had been transferred from VHS at some point. It wasn't exactly a blu-ray type experience. Now the reason I had to do this is because Daria is one of those shows that has proven itself rather difficult to get released as a DVD set. There are many horrible legal and buisiness-like reasons for this such as all the copyrighted music it uses and shit like that and I gotta say it's fucked up. Here we have a fucking work of art and people can't even fucking buy the show because the world is a fucking red tape, greedy-ass, capitolist wasteland full of people who would rather squeeze every penny than contribute anything to better the world.

So just to sum up the general thrust of this here review. Daria is a brilliantly realised and executed show that never quite got the recognition it deserved and the human race is shit for both failing to recognise it's magnificance and holding it back from a DVD release with all sorts of greedy legal bullshit.

The Real Message in Romeo and Juliet

I was just in the uni cafe when Taylor Swift's 'Love Sotry' came on and gave me something to write about. For many years now I am constantly reminded of how people seem to misinterpret the Shakespearean play Romeo and Juliet. Taylor Swift is a prime example of someone with an, at best, loose understanding of the play and decided that she would focus all her artistic energy into appropriating the "love" aspect of this story.

What am I on about here? Allow me to elaborate. To briefly run over the general plot as most people seem to see it. Romeo and Juliet fall in love despite they're familie's violent rivalry and tragically die trying to run away together. It is forbidden love that is trampled by the pettiness of honour and blah blah blah. All very tear jerky and tragic right? WRONG!

Now here's the way I see it. Romeo and Juliet are a pair of sexually frustrated teens who have never set eyes on a member of the opposite sex before who isn't poor and dirty or related to them. So their hormones kick in and they think they're in love because they can't stop staring at each other from across the room and lusting after the attractive young specimen who apparently can't stop staring either.

Now just as an aside, let my cinicism squash any belief you have in "love at first sight" right here. It doesn't exist. How can it? Seeing a person who makes your heart skip a beat is lust, plain and simple. Love implies a deep understanding and respect between the couple (amoung other things). It's hard to pinpoint exactly what love is but I can tell you right now that it is far too complex for you to be feeling it after a mere 2 seconds of carnal thoughts. Now stop! Don't bother flooding me with your little stories about how you know some old couple who've been happily married for 60 years and love each other just as much as they did the day they met and blah blah blah. Let me suggest this to you. Man and woman meet and are mutually attracted. This mutual attraction tricks their brain into rushing in and buying into the love thing before having a chance to really think about it. Now more often than not this temporal love will not last. This belief in love at first sight is probably the second greatest contributing factor in the whole shotgun wedding scene right after alcohol. Now on a very rare occasion this initial love trick will manage to withstand the scrutiny of your brain well beyond the time of the initial lust. But enough about that and back to the story.

So Romeo and Juliet is a story more about the frivolous nature of youth and the way in which they fail to act rationally because they're too busy trying to fall in love with everything in a desperate attempt to inject some meaning into their cold, hollow and temporal existance. Here's a story of a guy and a girl who have the hots for each other and decide to betray their parents and get married within 24 hours of fist talking to each other. Then they die because they are just a bunch of stupid kids who come up with the flimsiest, success-proof plan that their sex addelled brains could come up with. They enlist the help of the local preacher whom is only to happy to marry off a bunch of kids before they just have sex anyway without gods approval and then they die because they are a pair of dramatic twits who fail to ever communicate properly. How is this a love story? If anything it's sceptical of the merits to the whole buisiness in terms of how it makes people behave like morons. So let me just say that if you plan on writing a love story that parallels this story you should do some throough reading and reflecting beforehand so that you know what you're getting yourself into.

If Death Were a Videogame (get it?)

I would be lying to you if I told you that death didn't bother me. I am an empty, beliefless body that is terrified by the thought of death. In our world death is a big deal. Some people think it's final, some people think we come back as something else and others think that if they die in a way that reflects well on some ancient book that they'll be having the most bitchin' afterlife ever experienced. In the world of videogame logic though, death is many things, but it is never a big deal.

Take a game like Sonic. Sonic will run so fast that he can't see the cliff before he is experiencing it and will die only to use another life to hopefully learn from his past mistakes. Ah yes. What a different world it would be if we could collect extra lives. Not that it would be too easy. Remember ever trying and dying over and over trying to get an extra life that's in a place more dangerous than the fifth floor of a burning building? Yeah well imagine gambling your only real life in order to get another. Hectic.

In a multitude of FPS games you can come close to death and then recover yourself completely by simply hiding away from danger for a little while. Boy that'd be great huh? Break your leg and instead of hospitals and medical insurance all you need is to take it easy for a while and make sure no more harm comes to you for a minute or so. In these situations you can still die of course, but your chances for survival are drastically improved.

Death in the Sim's is very similar to death in real life. Your loved ones are devistated, you get a grave stone or an urn. But of course in the Sim's you can come back as a ghost to freak people out. Oh and more importantly Death comes in his personified form. Loved ones can play him in a game of chance to try and get you back. That's pretty handy, although they have to be there fairly quickly. But even if you lose at least you get to talk to Death. If he's anything like the Discworld's Death I would be quite pleased.

Death in JRPG's is, to say the least, very confusing. I remember specifically a point in Final Fantasy X where I was battling wave after wave of armed soldiers slowing chipping away at my health with multiple gunshots. After I'd been shot like 100 times and taken it all like they were throwing scrunched up paper at me I came to a cutscene where I was held at gunpoint I this managed to stop me because apparently during cutscenes bullets being fired at close range suddenly become dangerous. To make matter's even more confusing we have the ability to revive characters repeatedly during combat. Yeah I know that they usually call it being KO'd but I don't entirely buy that. After all when you're supposedly KO'd you get revived by pheonix downs (pheonix of course having the ability of rebirth) and even by spells that are called "Life." Both these things would make more sense if they were reversing the effects of death rather than being KO'd. And then there's the curious case where some JRPG's have a main character die off as part of the story. Why can't you revive them then? You still have the spells and items to do it and nothing happened to the character that you haven't already survived a million times before in combat. What the fuck is going on?

The Infinite Possiblogities Guide to Diabetes Prevention

Anyone who knows me personally knows that I have Type 1 Diabetes. I'm ok with it personally. When people first find out or when they're just feeling curious they give me a little quiz on the matter. "What's it like?" "I bet you'd be used to it by now?" "I could never infject myself. I hate needles." So it's apparent to me that many people aren't particularly fond of the idea of personally having diabetes. So I thought I'd put their minds at rest by publishing The Infinite Possiblogities Guide to Diabetes Prevention.

Warning: This guide is meant for entertainment purposes only and should not be followed in any way, shape or form. If you are infact an idiot and follow the guide anyway I am in no way responsible, no matter how good your lawyer is.

Moving right along, another common thing that people say when I say I'm diabetic as "yeah, I have an uncle with diabetes." So it seems only logical that in order to maximise your chances of remaining daibetes free you have to NOT become an uncle. Just make sure you're brothers and sisters remain single and unhappy and you should be fine. If you have a defiant, "good catch" for a brother or sister you should just make sure they practice safe sex. If they're trying for a child, sabotage them by slipping the pill into the woman's meals. If they're adopting, give a really bad reference. I guess you might really want a nephew or niece though. But don't worry, I have a backup plan.

You see sometimes people say that their father, not their uncle, is the one with diabetes. Now I know what you're thinking "But I want to raise a child Mr.B." That's why I say get a sex change after you have all your desired kids. What both being an uncle and a father have in common is the fact that you are a man. So become a woman and avoid diabetes today, the Infinite Possiblogities way!

Neither myself nor Infinite Possiblogities reccomend this course of action.

Red Bull Ad's

I am well aware that ads are an easy target for a blogger. Nobody will ever stand up to defend an ad. Ads are almost universally bad with miriad things to rip on. I was never really intending to touch on ads personally, but then along came Red Bull. It all started out as a bit of fun. Well actually they were never fun. Red Bull ads were always badly drawn, cheapo affairs with a script and a sense of humour like the writers were all on coke, watching American Pie 2 and trying to communicate their ideas to each other in foreign languages. But of late Red Bull ads have gotten, well, raunchier. Red Bull is forever claiming to "Give You Wings" but I think now they're implying the Red Bull "Get's you horney." They're really unsubtle about it and it's only been getting worse. Soon the ads will just be like this...

"Red Bull. Make the connection"

They're really embarassing ads to watch with other people, especially if there's only two of you and especially, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOUR WATCHING TV WITH YOUR FUCKING PARENTS. It's horrible and awkward and I wish I could publically humiliate the people resonsible.