Things That Don't Matter

So about a week ago in my English class we finished up our satire unit which I enjoyed a lot. We did a project where we created our own satirical pieces, and I think the one I worked on is pretty awesome. I actually did not create this by myself, co-author credit goes to Niall Reynolds and Shane Casey. This is different from most of the stuff on my site in that it’s much less direct. I could never create stuff like this on a regular basis because it requires much more cleverness than I can constantly provide, but anyway, I hope you like it. Because of the special formatting I had to scan it into a PDF, click here to view it.

So today I got Rockband, and then my afternoon disappeared. Rockband is a lot of fun. Originally I was worried that I would have to have friends around to play the game properly, that fear was quelled both when the game didn’t seem to care whether I played alone or with others and when my little sister immediately jumped in. This is really one of the better things about Rockband, I hardly ever do anything with my little sister other than begrudgingly go to a recital of some sort, it really is a fun family game. I’d played Guitar Hero at other people’s houses before, so I knew what to expect from guitar, and immediately jumped on the drums, which Harmonix did a great job with. I never played with the RB1 drums, but supposedly the RB2 ones don’t clack as much when you hit them and have a little more bounce. They are extremely satisfying when you hit your stride, and not that hard to pick up. There’s a big debate raging out there over whether the RB drums serve as an intro into real drums. Obviously guitar is completely different from game to real life, but as far as drums are concerned it’s still pretty much the same thing. Obviously you would have to adjust a little to a real drum kit, but when you see someone able to do this you have to admit it would probably not be a big step for them. This afternoon alone I ascended from hardly being able to keep a simple beat in the drum trainer to medium difficulty and there’s some songs I can do on hard. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get better yet. Rock Band 2 has by far the best track list of any music game to date. Looking at the list before purchase I knew it was for me even though I didn’t recognize a majority of the songs. So far I don’t actually hate the other stuff as much as I expected. Unfortunately there’s too much metal, too much being any. What I want from this game is classic hits most people know and can easily get into with maybe some lesser known modern stuff thrown in, and Rockband 2 comes oh so close to that mark. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best yet. You can also fill out your track list with songs downloaded from their store, admittedly at a cost, but if you absolutely hate most everything on the disc you’ll almost definitely find something there. You get “Still Alive” from the excellent video game Portal and “Charlene (I’m Right Behind You)” by Stephen and the Colberts as free downloads, they’re both great. For some reason games like Rockband often seem to be the butt of jokes on the grounds that you’re standing in front of your TV pretending to be a rock star, except that you’re not. When I play FPS games I don’t pretend that I’m gunning down men with lives and families, I just play the game, it’s a challenge of reflexes and little more. The same goes for Rockband. You may say that there’s a big difference between playing instruments and shooting people, but I say that it’s a comparison I’m going to continue to make so deal with it. A lot of people say how about you go out and buy an instrument and learn to play it. OK then, while I’m at it I’ll buy a gun and learn to shoot it. Again you’ll say that there’s a big difference to playing instruments and shooting people, but I say tell that to elementary school orchestras everywhere, those concerts can be excruciating. What’s weird is that often the people who tend to be hardest on Rockband are musicians. This is a big budget video game with a huge following that has practically created its own culture fad dedicated entirely to what you love and do for a living, why are you not excited about that?

Conclusion: Rockband rocks! 98/100 (Two points deducted for heavy metal music).

I received several complaints about the length of my domain name, and I admit it is quite a mouthful, or rather a fistful, seeing as you’re typing. So today I registered the domain ttdm.info, which redirects to here. So if you have lazy fingers and don’t feel like typing out thingsthatdontmatter.net to get to my site each of the hundreds of times you probably visit every day, you can now type ttdm.info, the two are interchangeable.

Music, like television, has both the annoying and the awesome. Really as far as music goes, people can listen to what they want, but where’s the fun in that? Also like television, a lot of these topics will probably be revisited and expanded on at some point.

Annoying: I’d say that the cut off date for good music was around 1995. With few exceptions, I can’t stand modern music. Occasionally I’ll hear a song on the radio and think yeah that’s kind of catchy, I can see why it’s so popular, but other times I don’t get it at all. This is especially true with rap music, which generally speaking I cannot stand. The only rap music I’ve ever come close to liking is songs done as jokes, like the ones in the SNL Digital Shorts. Sometimes real rap music seems like a joke, it’s just so ridiculous. They all seem to be about how tough it is to live in the “hood” or something sickening like that. The truth is, all of these things like gang violence and drug addictions come from just plain being stupid, no two ways about it. Maybe I’m crazy, but I think a pretty easy way to avoid gang violence would be to not join gangs, is that such a hard concept? Rap music therefore boils down to people being idiots and if there’s one thing I can not stand it’s idiocy. The other music I don’t understand is heavy metal. Congratulations, you can turn your amp all the way up and make noise while screaming into a microphone. It’s just loud noise, not music. Also I’m not a fan of country music, it all seems to be about trucks or guys who cheated on you (probably because you sing country music!).

Awesome: Most of the bands I like stopped making music decades ago and resurface only occasionally for some sort of revival tour or Superbowl halftime show. Bands like The Beatles, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Boston, Pink Floyd, Queen, the list goes on. There isn’t really much to say about them except that they were, and continue to be, awesome. Now, I mentioned before that with few exceptions I can’t stand modern music, it’s time to talk about those exceptions. In general, the modern music I like is commonly referred to as “indie” because these bands at some point released albums on record labels independent of the big four. However, all of the ones I like have since signed with a big four label, making them simply alternative, which is great because it means I don’t have to be a pretentious twat to listen to their music. It seems that the definition of the word indie has been expanded to include everyone not born with a record contract. It almost seems like it’s become it’s own genre, which is stupid. I’m very strongly against liking music just because of the image it purports, which admittedly is somewhat of a double standard because I’m totally for not liking music based on its image. Anyways, #1 on the exceptions list is R.E.M., who are probably just about my favorite band of all time. I’m counting R.E.M. as modern because their latest album, Accelerate, was released last year. #2 on the list is The Decemberists. The Decemberists stand head and shoulders over every other band I’ve ever heard when it comes to inventive lyrics. Their next album due out in March entitled The Hazards of Love is going to be a rock opera, telling a narrative throughout the entirety of the album. Up until a few days ago they had a song from the album publicly available as a free download on their website. The song is called The Rake’s Song, and it’s about a guy who gets married at 21 and has 3 kids, but then his wife dies giving birth to a fourth and now he’s stuck with the kids. He want’s to go back to his life of freedom so he kills them. How awesome is that for a song?

That’s about all that jumps out at me right now.

You know what’s funny? I actually worried more about offending people with this post than I did with religion.

By popular demand, here is the poem I wrote last year for my English class that everyone absolutely loved (especially my teacher, resulting in a 26/25).

I Had a Poem

I had a poem
It was four pages long
It was about living a day, just one day, in my life
I wrote it immediately
It was done by the end of the day
The words just seemed to flow and there it was

Last night I gave up on it
I just couldn’t do it
I couldn’t stand up and read it
I knew I wouldn’t be able to

I thought it was my chance
My chance to share all my thoughts with the world
But I realized I couldn’t do it
Never all at once, maybe not at all
Even if I could
It was depressing
And that’s not what I’m going for

I wanted it to be perfect
Like the ones we read in class
I wanted it to be funny, but sad
I wanted it to be captivating, awe-inspiring
But reading it I was unsure it would be any of those
And that uncertainty tore me apart from the inside out

Is this really the world we live in?
Where I cannot complete an assignment for fear of being judged?
We’ll I’m not going to rant
That was what the other one was about
And that’s partly why I gave up on it

Well now I have a problem
I’ve got two minutes till English and I’ve got nothing
I’ve got killer writer’s block
I could write about the drooling idiots in my Spanish class
It would go something like this:

I feel sorry for my Spanish teacher
It’s Spanish three
And these kids can barely say “hola”
I feel like yelling at them
And occasionally I try
But my voice is drowned by another flood of stupid questions
I guess I shouldn’t care
I don’t have to do any work

No, might offend someone
I could write about my dog
No, not interesting at all
I could write about soccer
But I don’t play anymore
I could write about war and/or peace
Way too cliché

It should have a message but not be preachy
It should make you think
When I read it
Everyone should know its good
Even if they don’t know why
I want to look into the faces of my audience
And see that I have changed their lives
I miss my old poem
But I can’t go back now

Oh god the bell
Even if I had an idea I could never write it now
Did I really not complete the most interesting assignment I’ve had all year?
And possibly ever?
No
I did complete it
But as I said, I gave up on that poem

True story, I wrote that in my Spanish class and finished up in the couple minutes before the final bell for English. Everyone was pretty impressed. It’s funny to look back on it now because this website is entirely about sharing my thoughts with the world, although not in person. Also looking back I don’t think the first one I wrote was that good either. I’m not sure how well this reads on paper, it was designed to be read aloud, so if I get around to it I might put up an audio version.

Welcome to my new segment, greatest movies of all time. Films that I cover here are certified (by me) to have obtained high levels of excellence. Everyone should see these movies. If I cover a movie that you haven’t seen, then go see it!

So, the movie! I guess Annie Hall is what you could call a love story, but I wouldn’t. It is about relationships, but it’s about ones that don’t work, rather than ones that do. It pulls away from all the other cookie cutter romantic comedies that end with whoever you wanted to get together getting together and it’s implied that it’s happily ever after. Annie Hall takes happily ever after and turns it into miserable before, during, and after, and I absolutely loved it. The movie had a lot of messages, but one of the more prominent ones was that relationships are always a mess, so why do we bother. That really spoke to me because, well, I’m always asking the same question. Woody Allen has this one great line that goes, and I’m paraphrasing here, “There’s this joke. This guy goes to a psychiatrist and he says “Doc, my brother thinks he’s a chicken.” “Well, you should bring him in,” says the psychiatrist. “Well I would, but I really need the eggs.” And that’s how I feel about relationships. They’re totally irrational, but in the end, we all need the eggs.” And that’s how I feel about relationships, I just never had such a great way of putting it. There’s another line that’s not so major to the plot of the movie, but I picked up on it, and for me, it really put the whole thing over the top. Woody Allen says, “You know, you know how you’re always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because, uh, it’s real difficult in life.” And that really spoke to me, because in my own work of art, I’m angling for the perfect ending, the one that’s not going to ever happen for me in real life. Even when Woody Allen wasn’t saying anything profoundly connected to my own thoughts, I still identified with his character, pessimistic, sarcastic, removed, everything about him was me. There were several scenes I loved where he would sort of step out of what was going on to comment on the scene. Sometimes others join him. There’s one scene where he stops and addresses a couple on the street, asking them how they’re happy, to which the girl replies “Uh, I’m very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say,” and the guy says, “And I’m exactly the same way.” The movie had so many great lines I could fill pages with them, but I won’t, you just have to go see it for yourself.

Television is both awesome and annoying, depending on what you’re watching. Most of the topics I touch on here will probably get their own articles dedicated to them at some point, but I have to do this quick, I have homework. Here’s what’s awesome:

NBC: NBC is my favorite network at the moment for one reason, Thursday. Their Thursday lineup has My Name is Earl, Kath and Kim, The Office, and 30 Rock, all excellent sitcoms and well above what passes for quality television these days. The rest of the week I’m not so big on NBC, their reality shows are horrible, (what reality show isn’t?) and their dramas and or action shows are dull, or at least, they’ve never interested me enough to bother watching one. The only other NBC show I watch is Chuck, which was entertaining last season, but I don’t see how much longer they’re going to be able to drag the story out, it got repetitive halfway through last year.

The Daily Show/Colbert Report: I put these two together almost as one show, seeing as I watch them one after the other. I don’t get Comedy Central, but they’re nice enough to put the episodes online the next day, with fewer commercials too! This online full episodes thing is great for me and I hope it continues. The Daily Show often focuses on mocking other news networks rather than the news, especially FOX. FOX News has said some of the most ridiculous stuff I’ve ever seen, the Daily Show has a library of clips from them that could take you a lifetime to watch, although that much exposure to Republican propaganda can’t be good for your health. The Colbert Report moves at a much faster pace than the Daily Show, which I like, and Stephen does a great job of mocking conservatives by pretending to be one. It’s amazing how ridiculous some of the policies sound when he delivers them. Admittedly, he exaggerates a little, but I don’t think he’s that far off the mark.

South Park: This show is just hilarious. I love the way in a lot of their episodes how a plot is derived from a figure of speech taken literally. For instance, a recent episode was about the latest Indiana Jones movie, they asserted that Indiana had been, well, I’ll substitute what they actually said with slaughtered. Then they had the characters deal with the tragedy of seeing their beloved friend Indiana slaughtered like that, as if they had witnessed a real friend of theirs killed.

The Simpsons: The only show that makes the FOX network worth watching. And I don’t think they’ll be around too much longer, all the original writers have gone and episode plots have lost, well, I can’t put my finger on it, they’re just not the same anymore. The show is still decent, but it’s not what it used to be.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog: Dr. Horrible was a web exclusive produced last year during the writers strike. A bunch of writers and actors weren’t doing anything, so they came up with Dr. Horrible. I heard about this as one of those “anything’s possible on the internet” type things which always sound great but end up disappointing. This was not at all disappointing. The plot was great, the acting was professional, and it was a musical, but the songs were good. I watched it the other day and they’re all stuck in my head. I recommend everyone see it, here’s a link: http://www.hulu.com/hd/29272. A side note about Hulu: Hulu is awesome. They have all professionally done stuff, the ads are limited, and the ad volume is actually lower than the rest of the video, which is incredible. That may not sound like a big deal, but some places have the ad volume ridiculously loud.

Here’s what annoys me:

The CW: (Shudder) I don’t know where to begin with this network. Their claim to fame is shows like Gossip Girl and 90210. I tried watching Gossip Girl last night so I might have grounds to criticize it, but I just couldn’t do it. All the characters are so whiny, they complain about unimportant problems like their lives hang in the balance. What dress to wear to the dance could pass for the plot of an entire episode. I hate hearing all the stupid gossip when I’m in school, what on earth made them try to bring it into my home?

Reality TV: ALL reality TV sucks. Reality TV should go die in a hole somewhere. It’s ruining television. First off, reality TV is an oxymoron, the idea of TV is that it’s not real. Shows have writers for a reason, to come up with clever and entertaining plots. Writers are the very base of TV, I would class them as more important than all other groups involved in television production. When you take them out you have nothing. People are stupid, I watch TV to be away from all the stupid people, I don’t want all those stupid people on my TV.

That about covers TV for now, like I said, some of those sections will probably end up with their own articles at some point, especially the annoying ones.

Let me first explain something about my review process. I review things as I come to them, not as they are released. I’m generally too cheap or too lazy to go get new stuff all the time, I read or watch whatever I find when it gets to me. Mirror’s Edge was released over a month ago and just about everyone has complained about it and moved on, but not me, deal with it.

I really really wanted to give Mirror’s Edge a good review. It was the only game released this year that tried something different, and the demo was excellent, but it seems that that was as far as they got with the polishing. Don’t get me wrong, I had fun with the rest of the game, but it had a tendency to annoy the hell out of me at certain points that I just cannot forgive it for. One thing this game sorely misses is a quick save, and maybe that will be in the PC version, but on the PS3 you’re left to respawn wherever the game feels like putting you, it can either be right where you were, or miles back, it tends to put you further back at the more difficult parts. The story is lacking, it might have been better off without it, and the cut scenes look like esurance commercials, they jar you from the game’s otherwise clean appealing graphics. They would have done much better to keep you in the first person the whole time, Half Life style. One of the things I did like about the game was the camera, the motions and flailing limbs at the edges of the screen really put you in the game. A friend of mine sitting next to me pointed out that I was rocking back and forth on the couch as I swung from bar to bar. It was a lot of fun when you knew what you were doing and could string together a bunch of moves, but that would undoubtedly bring you to unfamiliar territory in which you would fumble for another five minutes before again managing to fluidly complete the next section. The combat was also annoying. The game makes a big show of teaching you how to punch and kick, but I hardly ever used them. In almost all cases using disarm is the best option, not only do you take out the enemy in one fell swoop, but you take their gun as well. When enemies are shooting at you, they have unlimited ammo and could fire at you forever, although a moment is all that’s necessary to take you out, but as soon as you pick up the gun you have one clip, and it runs out fast. Your accuracy at long range is non existent, it is very easy to fire at a far off target only to run out of ammo without hitting them once and leave a long empty space between you and your ever firing opponent. I liked it when there where one or two enemies in your path that you could work into your routine, treating them like any other solid obstacle, but the game occasionally presents you with an area with a number of enemies and not a lot of room to maneuver, which is annoying and doesn’t fit with the play style the rest of the game has.The motion sensing is insensitive, so for the most part I went with the button controls, but in the case of rolling, even that barely ever worked. The game wanted you to hit the button as you approached the ground, but not too close, finding this magical sweet spot eluded me for the entirety of the game, it seemed to work when it felt like it. Here’s a clever metaphor I came up with: EA is a student, and Mirror’s Edge is a paper they have handed in to me, the teacher, entitled Someday I’ll Be President. In order to not crush this child’s dreams forever I write good effort, but know that this child will never ever be president (although good effort seems to be about all it takes these days, but that would be admitting that Bush actually put effort into being president, which I doubt he did). The paper, although of good substance, is poorly written and full or grammatical errors.

Although I have mostly complained about this game, I really did enjoy it, and look forward to a hopefully improved sequel. Final score: 75/100.

I’m a little disappointed that I missed out on all the fun of yelling about candidates during the election, but I figure it’s not too late to still get out what I have to say about all of them. This post will probably fall into both the things that are awesome and the things that annoy me categories, because there were a lot of both. One of the first things I loved about this election was the political comedy that went along with it. Every day Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had fresh material, some candidates turned out to be gifts that just kept on giving. The election seemed to pull SNL out of what had been a slump, everyone talked about Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin impression, (which was awesome) and the opening political sketches were replayed over and over again. Some of what happened didn’t really even need writers, some candidates were laughable on their own.

More seriously now, I’ll go through my candidates from favorite to least favorite.

1. Barack Obama: One word, awesome. I don’t get all these people who say that there wasn’t the candidate for them in this election, that neither was what this country needs. Well then, what does our country need? Obama boosts our worldwide image, people love him overseas, something that we haven’t seen for the past eight years. Obama isn’t a war happy maniac who’ll go around starting fights that don’t need to be fought and dancing around the big red button. There’s also the simple fact that Obama has what appears to be a fully functioning brain, another thing the white house hasn’t seen in a while. It’s a fact that the economy does better under democratic presidents, I think that no matter what he does the feeling of security people will get just from knowing he’s in charge should be enough to help boost our trembling economy. A lot of people complained about Obama’s tax plan, and admittedly it’s probably his weakest point, but my thought was, if you’re making over $250,000 a year, then you don’t need all that money, we do. Education is way underfunded, along with loads of other internal programs that have lost attention next to the the black hole of the Iraq War, which Obama will hopefully get us the hell out of.

2. Joe Biden: meh. Obama’s choice of Joe Biden was a little boring, but that’s probably a good thing. There wasn’t really any more room for exciting candidates on that ticket and Biden filled out the boring old white guy requirement perfectly. He did say a lot of stupid stuff though, the Obama campaign should have kept a lid on him like the McCain campaign hid Palin. No one would have noticed.

3. John McCain: old. John McCain was old and out of touch. His temper was equal to that of a… hmmm… something that doesn’t have a very large temper. The War in Iraq would go on forever and I’d probably turn 18 around the same time the draft went into affect. Also, his health care plan was dumb, a $5000 tax credit? That would force a lot of people getting health care from their employer to switch to a worse plan, and there’s not really such a thing as a good plan in health care, only bad, and worse. Insurance companies are downright evil, we’d be better off without them. Universal health care is one of the many reasons Canada is better than us (also Britain I think). I got really annoyed at McCain’s constant assertions that Obama was a socialist. There is an actual socialist candidate for president and he went on The Colbert Report and said that in no way was Obama socialist. Also, socialism isn’t the great evil that conservatives like to make it out to be when they explain things to their base (trailer trash). Socialism has never been handled well, and on the whole it’s probably not a great system, but it has its merits. Look at where Capitalism has gotten us. McCain was senile and contradicted him self more times than I could count, and based on McCain’s ability to keep track of how many houses he owns he probably wouldn’t be able to count either.

4. Sarah Palin: it is hard to find the words to describe how much I despise this woman. What is this country coming to? It legitimately scares me that someone like this could make it so close to the white house. I disagreed with absolutely everything she said. I couldn’t fit all of the stupid things she said into a post that would fit on one page. Palin is the physical incarnation of everything wrong with this country. Everything. She ruined Alaska. Alaska used to be a place you would hear about and imagine a majestic wilderness filled with adventure. Now I can only think of her, the magic is gone. The Daily Show visited Wasilla, which looked like nothing more than your average mid sized suburban city. For those of you who live around here, it looked like Danbury, except everyone was a hick. I visited Wasilla’s website and was greeted by something that looked surprisingly professional: http://cityofwasilla.com/. Way too good for some little nowhere town in Alaska, so I looked up an archived page from six months ago and found this. Quite a contrast. I wonder how much they paid for the new one, probably not as much as they wasted on clothes. That was another thing, they complained about Obama having too much money for his campaign, when they’d just gone and blown hundreds of thousands on designer clothes. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I hope to never hear from Palin again.

A little something about Congress: Go democrats! A few people have told be that they don’t like having one party have all the power, but I say that it’s way better that way, because stuff actually gets done. I would prefer a republican majority to a split, but the current situation is the best of all scenarios, the democrats have the right idea.

It was a pretty awesome election overall.

So the other day I was thinking (I’m always thinking) and I discovered what I now believe to be just about the awesomest word in the English language, ‘just’. Not when it’s used in the context of fairness, for instance, the Justice System, about as unjust as you can get, but rather when you put it in front of a noun. It’s just a ______. It automatically makes whatever you’re talking about unimportant. It’s just a homework assignment, it’s just your life, it’s just the universe, it’s just ‘just’. Whatever it is it’s no longer of any importance. It’s great! You never have to worry about anything again. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, just put just in front of it and it won’t seem so important anymore. You’re just an alcoholic, you’re just terminally ill, you just don’t care any more. It’s awesome!

Also great: ‘only’. It works just as well in most of those situations, maybe better in some.