It seems to me like it's getting harder and harder to know who to pat on the back for a job well done, in the entertainment industry. You can hear a song, or see a movie, or watch a TV show, and even thought you see or hear a name, taking credit for it, do you know who really produced what you are enjoying?
I'm currently burning all of my CDs to my MP3 player. I have a lot of CDs, so it's taking a long time, but one thing I have noticed is that the software informs me of the composer of every song. It's interesting to see the bands that write their own songs and the ones that don't. Now, unfortunatly, I don't own any Britney Spears CDs, so I had to google who writes her songs. I knew it wasn't her, but just wanted to make sure before I slam her for not writing anything she sings. So when it comes to Britney, or any artist that has nothing to do with the music they perform, how can the songs be called Britney Spears songs? Someone wrote the lyrics, someone put them to a beat, someone edited and mixed it to sound good, and someone sang the words. Who did most of the work? Who put in most of the effort? Most popular Britney songs are written by one guy. If he simply got someone else to sing the words (someone that could sing better would be nice) Britney would be nobody. So the songs would manage without Britney, but not visa versa, and yet they are Britney songs? On the other end of the scale you have artists that are 100% in control of what they make. Take Mattew Good. On his Avalanche CD, he wrote the lyrics for every song, he played guitar, piano, keyboards, and percussion on every song, he sang every song and even though the strings were played by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, they were written and arranged by Matt Good. Oviously he had some help on the CD. I'm sure it was edited and mixed by other people, but Matt was probably there to guide them where he wanted to go with it. So when you hear a Matt Good song, you know it was his creation. It's something he made, from start to finish.
Movies and TV shows are even more of a grey area. If you watch a Spike Lee movie, or and producers movie, how much of the movie is theirs? Sometimes you have people like Mike Myers, that write, produce, and star in their movies. Austin Powers is a Mike Myers movie, start to finish. Now a movie can be written by one person, directed by another, produced by another, and starred in by many, not to mention the countless people involved in costumes, stunts, music, location selection, casting, etc, etc. But it seems like it's usually one or two people that get credit for the movie. If the movie wins an award, everyone that made the movie what it was, doesn't get credit. What was it that made the movie great? The acting? The directing? The plot?
The point I'm trying to make is that sometimes the people that deserve credit, never seem to get it, and sometimes, produced puppets, like Britney Spears, who had nothing to do with her success, are made out to be gods. I"ve come to learn to respect and enjoy talented artists, regardless of they type of music they make. I'm not a fan of Hip Hop/Rap/R&B type music, but artists like Pharrell Williams, that write songs for other artists (including Britney Spears) as well as songs for himself to perform, show major talent, and it comes through in their performances.
You may think that the Katy Perrys and Britney Spears of the world are talentless hacks, because of "their" music. But just because they are in the same genre of music doesn't mean they are the same produced, type of person. Katy Perry writes, or at least co-writes all of her songs. Britney does not.
The next time you see a movie you enjoy, try to notice what it was you enjoyed the most. If it was the good acting, watch other movies with the same actors. If it is the producing, or directing, try watching movies with the same producers or directors. Look to see who writes the music you like. Maybe they write for other people too. I have found, when you trace back the main contributing factors, to something you like, it can lead you to find other things you will enjoy. You will find that fimiliar names have contributed to a large vierety of things.
Don't judge a book by it's cover. Just because you don't care for something doesn't make it bad, or mean that the artist has no talent, but also be aware, that the things you might enjoy most, may have nothing to do with the person performing them.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Are we the final stop?
I'm currently reading a Richard Dawkins book called "The Blind Watchmaker". It is a long, wordy book, that goes into very deep detail about evolution, and how it works. The term Blind Watchmaker comes from the fact that evolution has no set course. There is no final dirrection in which it is heading. It's simply following natural selection. A quick example of this would be a giraffe. Many, many years ago, giraffes legs and necks were not as long as they are today. As all the other animals, that giraffes cohabitated with, ate the leaves and new gowth off of the trees, they left the only eatable food high on the trees, out of reach of most animals. Now a girrafe that was a little bit taller than the other giraffes might have been able to reach further up the trees and get the eatable food. So the taller giraffes ate, while the shorter ones starved to death. The tall giraffes matted with other tall giraffes, which caused the "taller" genes to getted passed along, while the "shorter" genes died out. Over thousands of years, this cycle compounded and caused giraffes to be the freakishly tall animals they are today. The giraffe didn't get taller by thinking about it, or telling it's children to be taller. The short ones died. The tall ones ate the food at the tops of the trees and lived. It wasn't preplanned, it was blind evolution.
What is the point of my little evolution, natural selection story? After fully understanding how it works, I thought of a major problem. As humans, we have stopped evolution. Think about it. Evolution and natural selection have always allowed the smartest, fastest, stongest, best equiped to carry on, breed and pass on their genes. That no longer happens in the civilized human species. You have out of shape, dumb, unhealthy and lazy people having 12 children, and the fit, active, smart, contributing people having 1.5 kids. We are propping up the weak. I'm not saying we shouldn't, I'm just saying, because of that, we have stopped evolution. We might even be going bcakwards. I already covered how we support criminals in my previous blogs. Those low life, lazy, dumbasses breed. In caveman days, they died off, leaving the tribe stronger.
This is the first time in billions of years, that natural selection, in a species, has stopped. We have got to the point, that we have enough control over the worlds resources, that we can make sure that even the weak can survive. The weak usually fell victom to preditor, disease, or hunger. In the civilized world we no longer have any real preditors to worry about, we have medicine to help fight most disease, and we have so much food, most of it ends up in the garbage. We've made it very easy to survive, meaning anyone can do it. I'm not saying this is really a bad thing, it just makes you think.
Is this the end of the line? Have we brought an end to change?
What is the point of my little evolution, natural selection story? After fully understanding how it works, I thought of a major problem. As humans, we have stopped evolution. Think about it. Evolution and natural selection have always allowed the smartest, fastest, stongest, best equiped to carry on, breed and pass on their genes. That no longer happens in the civilized human species. You have out of shape, dumb, unhealthy and lazy people having 12 children, and the fit, active, smart, contributing people having 1.5 kids. We are propping up the weak. I'm not saying we shouldn't, I'm just saying, because of that, we have stopped evolution. We might even be going bcakwards. I already covered how we support criminals in my previous blogs. Those low life, lazy, dumbasses breed. In caveman days, they died off, leaving the tribe stronger.
This is the first time in billions of years, that natural selection, in a species, has stopped. We have got to the point, that we have enough control over the worlds resources, that we can make sure that even the weak can survive. The weak usually fell victom to preditor, disease, or hunger. In the civilized world we no longer have any real preditors to worry about, we have medicine to help fight most disease, and we have so much food, most of it ends up in the garbage. We've made it very easy to survive, meaning anyone can do it. I'm not saying this is really a bad thing, it just makes you think.
Is this the end of the line? Have we brought an end to change?
Sunday, February 20, 2011
The cost of social media.
You know what really grinds my gears? People that live their lives checking twitter, updating facebook and texting. It seems like people don't have time to deal with the real world anymore. They are too busy updating as many people as they can about their current happenings. Can't it wait? Or better yet, not be done at all?
There are many ways now to let your family and friends know what you are currently doing, or plan to do, your current mood, or what you ate for lunch. You can text, which seemed to do the job, but why text different people, when you can spam all your family and friends by putting it on facebook, or tweeting it, or blogging it.
I don't fully understand the point of it all. I can understand in some circumstances sending a mass text to all your friends that you are hosting a party tonight, or blogging while you are on a trip, to update all your family and friends on your current status, without having to make a bunch of phone calls. There are practical uses for it, but for the most part, it's nothing of importance. There is a line I heard in a show called The Boondocks, that summed it up best "Nothing typed with your thumbs has ever been worth reading". It's true.
If something is of importance, don't you want to talk to someone? If I break my leg, and need help, am I going to text someone? When i buy or sell something on craigslist, people insist on texting back and forth for 15 minutes. Can't I call, ask about the item for sale, when I can come see it, and where it is located? Do I really need to send text messages back and forth? You can find out more information in a 30 second phone call that you can in 5 minutes of texting. My time is important, lets speed this up a bit.
So really texting and twitter and facebook is about nothing. It's a constant back and forth of where you are, what you are doing, who you are doing it with, what you plan to do later, blah, blah, blah. It's what's going on in your daily life. Who cares? Seriously, you think your life is so important that you need to consatantly update everyone on every exciting minute? I have my own life to deal with, and the funny thing is, it is far more exciting than yours. You know how I know? Because I don't have the time to update anyone about it! What I'm doing is probably fun, exhilarating, fast paced and requires concentration. I don't have time to type what I'm doing with my thumbs, nor do I have time to read what you ate for lunch.
Now maybe it seems I'm getting worked up about nothing, I can just choose to not partake. But the problem is, it effects intereactions in the real world. If I am having conversation with someone, in person, and that persons concentration is constantly interupted by text messages, it detracts from the conversation. It breaks your chain of thoughts. If you are face to face with a real, live person, and you are responding to text messages, what signal does that send to the person you are talking to? Sorry, but someone just texted me that they bought a new pair of shoes, and that is more important to me than what we are talking about. I presented this concept to a friend. His rebuttal was that it might be an emergency. Someone might be hurt or dead. If someone is seriously hurt, or dead, is the news going to come in the form of a text? You don't think you might get a phone call instead? Nothing of immediate importance comes in the form of a text, or twitter update, so you are going to stop a conversation, with a person, in the same room as you, to respond to a text about nothing? You don't think you owe it to the person in the room to give them priority over someone oviously doing something very uninteresting and texting about it? I went to a restaurant this weekend, and noticed a family of 6 or 7 people all sitting down for a nice dinner. At least half of them had their faces burried in their phones, texting, or updating, or checking out youtube etc. Those things can't get put on hold for an hour, so that you can talk to your family and see what's going on in their lives? Does everyone have attention deficit disorder? You can't focus on any one person for more than a minute? You need a constant outside stimulus to keep you awake? I like the beer commercial that says "this beer is for Steve, that thinks that if you are going to talk to someone in a bar, they should actually be in the bar". Another friend of mine, has a lot of female friends, most of which have a bit too much drama in their lives. He is constantly recieving texts from these girls. Each one will ask what he is going to do today, how he is feeling, etc, etc. He gets to the point that he wants to just throw his phone out the window because it wont stop beeping at him. It consumes a lot of his time to have to respond to endless texts about nothing. He says he wants them to stop, but doesn't know how to do it without "being rude". I suggest just calling them everytime they send a text. If it is important enough to text me, you must want to talk about something. After a while I'm sure the texters will realize, what they are typing is not of importance, and if it's not worth interupting someone with a phone call, it isn't worth interupting them with a text.
I'd also like to point out, the bulk of text messages involve at least one female. It's a girl sending a girl a text, or it's between a guy and a girl. For the most part guys don't text guys. If it's important, a guy will phone a guy. If it's not important, a guy wont bother contacting another guy. Girls like to talk, about nothing. A phone call is too invasive, so they just text. That way they can make it last all day, and they know the person on the other end is thinking about them all day, whether they want to or not.
I honestly think this will come full circle. It was so cool to be seen with a cellphone. You must be important if you had a cellphone! Now it's texting. Sorry, but your so important you can't talk to the people infront of you because other people need to know what color your new purse is!
Well guess what. I'm so important, and my time is so valuble, I don't have time to read your texts. You people are all slaves to your social media. You're lives must be very bland if you need to constantly be stimulated by nothing. Sorry, but the new cool thing is to be too imortant for any of that. Everyone can waste their time, with their faces burried in tiny little screens. Me, I've got a life to live.
There are many ways now to let your family and friends know what you are currently doing, or plan to do, your current mood, or what you ate for lunch. You can text, which seemed to do the job, but why text different people, when you can spam all your family and friends by putting it on facebook, or tweeting it, or blogging it.
I don't fully understand the point of it all. I can understand in some circumstances sending a mass text to all your friends that you are hosting a party tonight, or blogging while you are on a trip, to update all your family and friends on your current status, without having to make a bunch of phone calls. There are practical uses for it, but for the most part, it's nothing of importance. There is a line I heard in a show called The Boondocks, that summed it up best "Nothing typed with your thumbs has ever been worth reading". It's true.
If something is of importance, don't you want to talk to someone? If I break my leg, and need help, am I going to text someone? When i buy or sell something on craigslist, people insist on texting back and forth for 15 minutes. Can't I call, ask about the item for sale, when I can come see it, and where it is located? Do I really need to send text messages back and forth? You can find out more information in a 30 second phone call that you can in 5 minutes of texting. My time is important, lets speed this up a bit.
So really texting and twitter and facebook is about nothing. It's a constant back and forth of where you are, what you are doing, who you are doing it with, what you plan to do later, blah, blah, blah. It's what's going on in your daily life. Who cares? Seriously, you think your life is so important that you need to consatantly update everyone on every exciting minute? I have my own life to deal with, and the funny thing is, it is far more exciting than yours. You know how I know? Because I don't have the time to update anyone about it! What I'm doing is probably fun, exhilarating, fast paced and requires concentration. I don't have time to type what I'm doing with my thumbs, nor do I have time to read what you ate for lunch.
Now maybe it seems I'm getting worked up about nothing, I can just choose to not partake. But the problem is, it effects intereactions in the real world. If I am having conversation with someone, in person, and that persons concentration is constantly interupted by text messages, it detracts from the conversation. It breaks your chain of thoughts. If you are face to face with a real, live person, and you are responding to text messages, what signal does that send to the person you are talking to? Sorry, but someone just texted me that they bought a new pair of shoes, and that is more important to me than what we are talking about. I presented this concept to a friend. His rebuttal was that it might be an emergency. Someone might be hurt or dead. If someone is seriously hurt, or dead, is the news going to come in the form of a text? You don't think you might get a phone call instead? Nothing of immediate importance comes in the form of a text, or twitter update, so you are going to stop a conversation, with a person, in the same room as you, to respond to a text about nothing? You don't think you owe it to the person in the room to give them priority over someone oviously doing something very uninteresting and texting about it? I went to a restaurant this weekend, and noticed a family of 6 or 7 people all sitting down for a nice dinner. At least half of them had their faces burried in their phones, texting, or updating, or checking out youtube etc. Those things can't get put on hold for an hour, so that you can talk to your family and see what's going on in their lives? Does everyone have attention deficit disorder? You can't focus on any one person for more than a minute? You need a constant outside stimulus to keep you awake? I like the beer commercial that says "this beer is for Steve, that thinks that if you are going to talk to someone in a bar, they should actually be in the bar". Another friend of mine, has a lot of female friends, most of which have a bit too much drama in their lives. He is constantly recieving texts from these girls. Each one will ask what he is going to do today, how he is feeling, etc, etc. He gets to the point that he wants to just throw his phone out the window because it wont stop beeping at him. It consumes a lot of his time to have to respond to endless texts about nothing. He says he wants them to stop, but doesn't know how to do it without "being rude". I suggest just calling them everytime they send a text. If it is important enough to text me, you must want to talk about something. After a while I'm sure the texters will realize, what they are typing is not of importance, and if it's not worth interupting someone with a phone call, it isn't worth interupting them with a text.
I'd also like to point out, the bulk of text messages involve at least one female. It's a girl sending a girl a text, or it's between a guy and a girl. For the most part guys don't text guys. If it's important, a guy will phone a guy. If it's not important, a guy wont bother contacting another guy. Girls like to talk, about nothing. A phone call is too invasive, so they just text. That way they can make it last all day, and they know the person on the other end is thinking about them all day, whether they want to or not.
I honestly think this will come full circle. It was so cool to be seen with a cellphone. You must be important if you had a cellphone! Now it's texting. Sorry, but your so important you can't talk to the people infront of you because other people need to know what color your new purse is!
Well guess what. I'm so important, and my time is so valuble, I don't have time to read your texts. You people are all slaves to your social media. You're lives must be very bland if you need to constantly be stimulated by nothing. Sorry, but the new cool thing is to be too imortant for any of that. Everyone can waste their time, with their faces burried in tiny little screens. Me, I've got a life to live.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
It's knot my falt eye kant spel.
My rant today has nothing to do with politics, or moral standards, good vs evil or anything of importance really. Just an observation I've made about how poorly designed the english langauge is. I am by no means a expert on langauges, but that hasn't stopped me from finding far too many flaws in the english langauge.
I'm a math and science kind of person. I understand physics. It all makes rational sence to me. If you arange the numbers from 1-10 and explain that each number is an increase by one unit, math is easy to understand. If 3+4=7 then 3+5=8. There are rules. If you give someone a math problem, there is one correct answer, because the rules are always true. There is no reasoning, or curcumtances when numbers can be different than what they are. That is why I understand it. It's black and white.
English on the other hand is full of grey areas. If you read the title of this blog, out loud, to another person, they wouldn't know that there are 5 spelling errors in it. So then why is it wrong? You got the point of what I was trying to say. Lets play with some words, starting with the word read. What word did I just type. The word that sounds like reed, or the word that sounds like red? Who knows? Shouldn't you be able to look at a word and know how to pronouce it? If the rule that "ea" makes the same sound as "ee" you can only pronouce the word one way, but for some reason read can be pronouced the same way as red. How does that make sence? Making matters more confusing, the word read is past tense of the word read. Why is the past tense of read, read? The past tense of feed is fed. Why not make red the past tense of read? Oviously because that would be confusing, because red is a color dummy! We have three ways to spell two, too, to, only one of witch, if you sound it out, sounds like the word too. No I didn't just misspell a word because you still said which in your head, so it was spelled right! But it's ok, because we have rules that help us spell the words right! Rite? Like I before E except after C, or sounding like A, like neighbor or weigh. It's weird that an ancient species like us haven't put policies in place to improve the efficiency of these "rules", because I just broke the rule five times in one sentence. Oneiromancies breaks the rule twice in one word. Of all the words in the english dictionary that contain either CIE or CEI, 66% break the rule! What type of rule is wrong two thirds of the time? So when you have words like right and rite, how do you know witch (I did it again, just for you!) one to use? If EE makes the same sound as EA and SION and TION sound the same at the end of a word, and their and there are two different words that sound the same, and saw and saw are different words, that look the same, and adding a K and a W to a word like no (know) doesn't change it's sound and malt is a word, but falt needs a U (fault) in it for some reason to sound the same way, how the hell are you supposed to know how to spell anything? You want me to memorize how to spell every word in english dictionary? That's why I like math. If I know 2+2=4, 2+3 must =5, but just because I can spell malt and salt, doesn't mean I have any idea how to spell fault.
Todays society (broke it again) forces everything to be spelled correctly. If you spell something wrong on your resume, you wont get the job. You misspell something on your blog, people will point it out the next time they see you. Everything gets spell checked. Reports for companies have to be perfect. For some reason, you are looked at like an idiot if you can't spell. Spelling requires no common sence. It doesn't require problem solving skills. It doesn't follow any rules, or make any rational sence. I requires people to memorize every word you'd ever want to spell. Where is the logic in that? I can't spell. I use google a lot to find spelling for words. I guess I'm dumb. Why the fuck is there a B on the end of dumb anyhow? But I'd rather be good at stuff that matters. Things that make sence. Things I can use in the real world, like math, and physics, and science (broke it again).
Next time you are reading my blog and find I have misspelled a word, understand that the point I was trying to make is no less valid. You still understood what the word was intended to be. Isn't the idea of laugauge to be able to communicate? So we can express our thoughts, and feelings? If a word is spelled wrong or used in the wrong context, does that mean we failed to communicate? The english langauge is full of flaws and yet we demand our skills using it to be flawless. If I want to say "majoritally, people that correct grammer are pinheads" why can't I? You wouldn't say "The collection of people that correct..." you would say "Collectively, people that correct..." Majoritally is not a real word, but you understand what it means, so why not use it? People make mistakes when it comes to words. I'd rther yu forgt a leter in the speling of a wrd than frget to ad a zero on my pay check. Sorry pay cheque.
I'm a math and science kind of person. I understand physics. It all makes rational sence to me. If you arange the numbers from 1-10 and explain that each number is an increase by one unit, math is easy to understand. If 3+4=7 then 3+5=8. There are rules. If you give someone a math problem, there is one correct answer, because the rules are always true. There is no reasoning, or curcumtances when numbers can be different than what they are. That is why I understand it. It's black and white.
English on the other hand is full of grey areas. If you read the title of this blog, out loud, to another person, they wouldn't know that there are 5 spelling errors in it. So then why is it wrong? You got the point of what I was trying to say. Lets play with some words, starting with the word read. What word did I just type. The word that sounds like reed, or the word that sounds like red? Who knows? Shouldn't you be able to look at a word and know how to pronouce it? If the rule that "ea" makes the same sound as "ee" you can only pronouce the word one way, but for some reason read can be pronouced the same way as red. How does that make sence? Making matters more confusing, the word read is past tense of the word read. Why is the past tense of read, read? The past tense of feed is fed. Why not make red the past tense of read? Oviously because that would be confusing, because red is a color dummy! We have three ways to spell two, too, to, only one of witch, if you sound it out, sounds like the word too. No I didn't just misspell a word because you still said which in your head, so it was spelled right! But it's ok, because we have rules that help us spell the words right! Rite? Like I before E except after C, or sounding like A, like neighbor or weigh. It's weird that an ancient species like us haven't put policies in place to improve the efficiency of these "rules", because I just broke the rule five times in one sentence. Oneiromancies breaks the rule twice in one word. Of all the words in the english dictionary that contain either CIE or CEI, 66% break the rule! What type of rule is wrong two thirds of the time? So when you have words like right and rite, how do you know witch (I did it again, just for you!) one to use? If EE makes the same sound as EA and SION and TION sound the same at the end of a word, and their and there are two different words that sound the same, and saw and saw are different words, that look the same, and adding a K and a W to a word like no (know) doesn't change it's sound and malt is a word, but falt needs a U (fault) in it for some reason to sound the same way, how the hell are you supposed to know how to spell anything? You want me to memorize how to spell every word in english dictionary? That's why I like math. If I know 2+2=4, 2+3 must =5, but just because I can spell malt and salt, doesn't mean I have any idea how to spell fault.
Todays society (broke it again) forces everything to be spelled correctly. If you spell something wrong on your resume, you wont get the job. You misspell something on your blog, people will point it out the next time they see you. Everything gets spell checked. Reports for companies have to be perfect. For some reason, you are looked at like an idiot if you can't spell. Spelling requires no common sence. It doesn't require problem solving skills. It doesn't follow any rules, or make any rational sence. I requires people to memorize every word you'd ever want to spell. Where is the logic in that? I can't spell. I use google a lot to find spelling for words. I guess I'm dumb. Why the fuck is there a B on the end of dumb anyhow? But I'd rather be good at stuff that matters. Things that make sence. Things I can use in the real world, like math, and physics, and science (broke it again).
Next time you are reading my blog and find I have misspelled a word, understand that the point I was trying to make is no less valid. You still understood what the word was intended to be. Isn't the idea of laugauge to be able to communicate? So we can express our thoughts, and feelings? If a word is spelled wrong or used in the wrong context, does that mean we failed to communicate? The english langauge is full of flaws and yet we demand our skills using it to be flawless. If I want to say "majoritally, people that correct grammer are pinheads" why can't I? You wouldn't say "The collection of people that correct..." you would say "Collectively, people that correct..." Majoritally is not a real word, but you understand what it means, so why not use it? People make mistakes when it comes to words. I'd rther yu forgt a leter in the speling of a wrd than frget to ad a zero on my pay check. Sorry pay cheque.
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