Well, the semester is all but over, and I guess I should say something about the class. It was fun. The discussions were open and refreshing, and it was nice to receive a writing assignment that didn't have an entire page of rigid rules and limitations. I wish more English classes followed that example. I don't mind writing about a certain book or story, but let me write what I want to about it. Don't give me 500 rules that pigeonhole me into writing some boring crap that will greatly resemble the work turned in by every other member of the class.
It was also nice to explore different media, and while I first didn't like the idea of a blog because in my experience only pretentious wieners who think anyone cares what they had for breakfast today or what their mood is create them. I make exceptions for people who have important ideas that they discuss, but for the most part "I'm going to see the Backstreet Boys reunion concert woooOOo~" is what blogs usually produce.
Will I keep this blog going? Probably not, for just that reason.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Terrible Advertising
I'm not sure if anyone reading this has seen the new Life Water commercials, but I'm hoping someone can explain what they're about to me. It's water. Ok. Cute girl. K. Wait, now the lizards and the girl are dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and some of the lizards have grills. What is this supposed to mean to me? Drink Life Water - Hot chicks and lizards, man. Is there a premise that I'm not getting?
I can just imagine the board meeting for this.
Exec: We need a new catchy advertisement for our Life Water, show me what you got.
Exec 2: Well, kids like chicks!
Exec: Hm yes, I like this. Needs more though.
Exec 3: Some sort of animal maybe? Kangaroos are pretty popular with kids these days.
Exec 4: I dunno, when I think kangaroos, I also think of dingos and baby stealing. I don't think baby stealing is gonna help our campaign.
Exec 3: What about lizards? Remember the Budweiser lizards? We can use lizards and avoid a lawsuit; I don't think you can copyright animals!
Exec 2: Oh man, have the girl dance with the lizards! To Thriller! Kids love Michael Jackson! It'll be awesome!
Exec 1: Perfect.
Screw this commercial.
I can just imagine the board meeting for this.
Exec: We need a new catchy advertisement for our Life Water, show me what you got.
Exec 2: Well, kids like chicks!
Exec: Hm yes, I like this. Needs more though.
Exec 3: Some sort of animal maybe? Kangaroos are pretty popular with kids these days.
Exec 4: I dunno, when I think kangaroos, I also think of dingos and baby stealing. I don't think baby stealing is gonna help our campaign.
Exec 3: What about lizards? Remember the Budweiser lizards? We can use lizards and avoid a lawsuit; I don't think you can copyright animals!
Exec 2: Oh man, have the girl dance with the lizards! To Thriller! Kids love Michael Jackson! It'll be awesome!
Exec 1: Perfect.
Screw this commercial.
On simplicity
As I read through my blog to look at things I've covered, I realized that my blog is pretty sparsely decorated. At first, I thought about adding some pictures, and then decided against it simply because I find it unnecessary. That's not to say they might not help my blog look more zippy, but it's a slippery slope. One day it's pictures, the next it's annoying background images and crappy Tool/Atreyu music. After that, you're not far off from using Comic Sans text and adding annoying mouse-cursors shaped like meteors or ravioli or whatever the hell else the Internet has managed to come up with.
I've had people ask me before if I had a Myspace account, and I answered no, because of just this kind of stuff. You find me a Myspace account that is tastefully done and doesn't want to make the human eye implode in a desperate attempt at escape, and I'll show you what represents the vast minority of blog/Myspace accounts.
If you're incapable of expressing yourself on these kinds of pages without looping some country song in the background to let people know just how you feel about the Iraq War, then you're doing a poor job. For proof, does anyone remember the early 90's and the annoying but prevalent trend of looping awful .midi files on webpages? It was bad. So bad. Anyone who remembers this probably just looked nervously around their room and hoped none of their webpages from back then still exist.
I'm not saying it's impossible to tastefully implement these sorts of things, but I dare anyone here to take the Myspace challenge and find more than 10 pages from their friends list that aren't capable of being compiled into a list of crimes against humanity.
I've had people ask me before if I had a Myspace account, and I answered no, because of just this kind of stuff. You find me a Myspace account that is tastefully done and doesn't want to make the human eye implode in a desperate attempt at escape, and I'll show you what represents the vast minority of blog/Myspace accounts.
If you're incapable of expressing yourself on these kinds of pages without looping some country song in the background to let people know just how you feel about the Iraq War, then you're doing a poor job. For proof, does anyone remember the early 90's and the annoying but prevalent trend of looping awful .midi files on webpages? It was bad. So bad. Anyone who remembers this probably just looked nervously around their room and hoped none of their webpages from back then still exist.
I'm not saying it's impossible to tastefully implement these sorts of things, but I dare anyone here to take the Myspace challenge and find more than 10 pages from their friends list that aren't capable of being compiled into a list of crimes against humanity.
More Unfunny Morons
Since I mentioned them last time, I figured I would elaborate on Tim and Eric.
For those of you not in the know, Tim and Eric's Awesome Show Great Job! is a terrible comedy show on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block. It makes no sense, has no premise, and the actual hosts themselves are people that I wish would get run over by a street cleaner. So far, the only people known to have ever cared for Tim and Eric are pompous turds who want to "get it" when no one else does or cares to, but they overlook the fact that there's nothing to get except the horrifying sight of two failures flailing away on television in a poor attempt at random or cutting edge humor. Their reason for existence, most likely clouded in secrecy and voodoo magic, is probably best explained by saying that they "cleanse the palette". Cartoon Network shows a decent show, and then they show Tim and Eric, which is so terrible and unfunny that they could follow that with a show about Leukemia patients being launched from catapults into a field of kittens, and it would still be more funny than Tim and Eric by simple comparison.
Tim and Eric are anti-funny. If they bumped into actual funny, the explosion would be immense and would cost billions of lives.
For those of you not in the know, Tim and Eric's Awesome Show Great Job! is a terrible comedy show on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block. It makes no sense, has no premise, and the actual hosts themselves are people that I wish would get run over by a street cleaner. So far, the only people known to have ever cared for Tim and Eric are pompous turds who want to "get it" when no one else does or cares to, but they overlook the fact that there's nothing to get except the horrifying sight of two failures flailing away on television in a poor attempt at random or cutting edge humor. Their reason for existence, most likely clouded in secrecy and voodoo magic, is probably best explained by saying that they "cleanse the palette". Cartoon Network shows a decent show, and then they show Tim and Eric, which is so terrible and unfunny that they could follow that with a show about Leukemia patients being launched from catapults into a field of kittens, and it would still be more funny than Tim and Eric by simple comparison.
Tim and Eric are anti-funny. If they bumped into actual funny, the explosion would be immense and would cost billions of lives.
I thought I was safe
For many months, I hoped that Comedy Central had finally done it. I thought they had rid me of Carlos Mencia. His comedy is an abomination, and that's if you use the word comedy extremely loosely. It's even worse than Tim and Eric's Awesome Show - Great Job!. Yes, somehow someone managed to be less funny than Tim and Eric. Carlos Mencia is a comedy void, sucking in galaxies and sponsors with no end in sight. It got bad enough during his last season that I couldn't watch Comedy Central without leaving it on mute for the fear of seeing one of his commercials.
The only way I can think of to describe his show is to imagine a world where scientists found a way to transmit cancer directly through a television into the unsuspecting eyeballs of an entire nation. His humor relies on hamfisted "racial observations" that lack the insight of Dave Chapelle's work and poor skits that only end with the viewer projectile vomiting in the bathroom.
The fact that his show was the "replacement" for Chapelle's Show is a tragedy.
The only way I can think of to describe his show is to imagine a world where scientists found a way to transmit cancer directly through a television into the unsuspecting eyeballs of an entire nation. His humor relies on hamfisted "racial observations" that lack the insight of Dave Chapelle's work and poor skits that only end with the viewer projectile vomiting in the bathroom.
The fact that his show was the "replacement" for Chapelle's Show is a tragedy.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
More on authors I hate
Woolf. Melville. Thoreau.
Boring.
How is it that someone in the distant past decided that these people were worth reading, when they're actually some of the most boring writers in the world? Have you ever tried to actually read Billy Budd or Mrs. Dalloway? It's like letters have organized themselves into a mob with the sole intention of killing your brain cells. Nothing happens. Flip page. Nothing happens. Flip page. Nothing happens. Throw book out window. Watch TV.
Boring.
How is it that someone in the distant past decided that these people were worth reading, when they're actually some of the most boring writers in the world? Have you ever tried to actually read Billy Budd or Mrs. Dalloway? It's like letters have organized themselves into a mob with the sole intention of killing your brain cells. Nothing happens. Flip page. Nothing happens. Flip page. Nothing happens. Throw book out window. Watch TV.
Informal as hell
Looking through my blog posts, I've come to the realization that I use a very odd sort of grammar on the Internet. I always put necessary apostrophes and crap where they're supposed to go, but I use a lot more run-ons and a sort of creative writing style. I realize that this whole blog thing is supposed to be an assignment, but who is gonna actually want to read the blog of some Grammar Gestapo guy? (Hint: No one) Isn't the point of this exercise to try new styles of writing in a different medium? I hope so, or Carney's gonna maul my blog.
Connecting...
I just spent 3 days without Internet access. It's like taking fire away from early man. Do you know how little there is to do in this town? Unless I want to go to a strip club or something there isn't anything to do here. I actually had to dig up single player games that I could kill time with. They were fun for a few minutes, and then I got bored again.
Never again.
Never again.
Class full of Teachers
Listening to the way people talk in class, I get the feeling that the overwhelming majority of people enrolled in Advanced Comp. are intending to be teachers. I always expected to run into that someday, but I honestly expected for it to be sooner.
The Death of English
No, not really, but the English major that most people are going for is pretty dead. No employer gives a rats ass if you can explain the rich metaphors involved in a work of literature. That crap is for hippies. People hiring writers for practical means want to know that you can form a sentence, and sadly, not a sentence to the standard of an English major. My journalism professor once told me that most newspapers aim for a 12th grade reading level when they're writing their stories. At first I couldn't believe it, until I actually paid attention to the way news stories were worded and constructed. Short sentences with easy to follow words. You know what people hate doing? Feeling dumb. Yea, congratulations, you used "nebulous" properly. Guess what? 90% of your classmates, and even some of your professors might not know what that means.
You wanna explore plot and meaning? I hope you're ready to go for a Ph.D, because that's the only way you're finding a job.
You wanna explore plot and meaning? I hope you're ready to go for a Ph.D, because that's the only way you're finding a job.
About Classics
Hate it. Terrible word. Some smartass decided that people like Woolf were worth reading a long time ago, so these are the books that get brought up in every class ever. Guess what? It's boring. You wanna know why English majors don't get jobs? Because they get crappy novels from boring authors shoved down their throats until they're all little robots that agree that Hemingway was a badass writer. I don't like Hemingway. I especially don't like Melville. They're awful, and you should stop making us read them.
Memoir thoughts
Lame. I don't like talking about myself. There's a reason I don't talk in classes unless I have something that I think is important to say. Maybe it's because I already know how everything turned out, but my life is pretty boring. I'm not a swashbuckler or an international arms dealer, so I figure my memoir would be pretty crappy. However, I can see Carney's point in trying to expose us to other types of writing.
Actually working
I've actually been pretty good about staying up to date with all my work this semester, and in some cases I've been doing it early, even. I guess I actually have classes I give a crap about this semester. God help me, I can't be excited about Renaissance paintings or Biology lectures, but writing for the Collegian is actually pretty enjoyable. Prof. Carney's class is turning out to be pretty good, and Popular Fiction doesn't involve the horrible literature I expected. I swear, the next person to make me read Virginia Woolfe is going to get an earful. What a hack.
On Plagiarism
Yea, same thing as the reflection we did. I don't know a soul who has plagiarized, it's just too risky. One thing I've learned from being an English major is that a smart professor will catch you every time. I suppose it could be an issue in earlier education, but I'd wager that if your assignment is so uninvolved and boring to the student that he feels the need to plagiarize someone else's work in order to complete it, the problem is you, not the student. Some day I'll figure out why schoolwork is so boring. I guess that's why I didn't bother doing any of it before I started college.
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