Archives for February 2003
That’s Ted Fucking Nugent! And me! And no, I’m not high in that picture, I swear.
Well, I’ve put off writing the Nugent entry for far too long now. In fact, it’s been a full week since I saw the Nuge, but the memory still shines brightly. The guy was the single most entertaining speaker I’ve ever seen, period. I think he pissed off, provoked, and delighted more students than any other speaker this campus has seen in my four years.
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Lest Ms. House think herself spared my “sharp tongue” (thanks Margaret), I must, of course, reply. Admittedly, I rather naively set myself up for failure, and Anne took me to task. But let’s probe a bit more deeply into the matter, shall we? I see two other men in our dear faux European’s life: an underage Scottish lad who had trouble “operating while under the influence,” and Dave Fucking Choate. Not exactly the Chippendales, hm? Of course, I’ll leave it up to you, the BLOGWARS™ observer, to decide whether this phenomena reflects more poorly on the excommunicated princess of Mormonism herself, or moi, given that I was indeed spurned while the others were invited to taste the forbidden fruits of LDS love. It’s a toss-up.
Coupla small rants:
A good, good day. Solid, productive all around. Those are the best, eh? The ones when you get stuff done.
I met one of my teachers, Peter Rehberg, for coffee this afternoon and we talked for almost two hours about a variety of things — everything from European politics to literature to what makes a good class discussion. I have a lot of respect for him. He has instilled in me a new respect for and understanding of literature. While talking to him I realized that his way of reading is to look at the world through a book — through the worldview presented in it. It’s sometimes hard to get a grasp on, especially in class, but it’s particularly satisfying to figure it out later on. More generally, it’s quite rewarding to talk to professors outside of class, and one thing I value in Northwestern is the professors’ accessibility. I’ve heard that at other schools, the profs are cold and uninterested. Almost all of my teachers here have been warm and engaging.
And beyond talking to teachers, I enjoy just making my voice heard. Okay, okay, that should come as no surprise, but it’s good to do it in official, polite capacities as well. Recently, I’ve e-mailed the Daily, three people in ASG, several professors, and a couple of administrators.
And now, to *yawn* respond… oh dear… you’re making it fahhh too easy…
The Chicago Manual of Style contains a huge chart listing various sorts of phrases that are or are not to be hyphenated. Consult such a reference source for a thorough-going account of this matter, but you may be able to get by with a few basic rules. An adverb/adjective combination in which the adverb ends in “-LY” is never hyphenated: “His necktie reflected his generally grotesque taste.”
Ahhhh, you know what feels really nice? Being right. Maybe I’ll let you try it sometime, Chancellor.
Tomorrow: the Nugent post… and the getting-fired post? That’ll be a dandy.
I quite enjoy sitting in the PC lab of the library’s basement, listening to Shoutcast radio on my Grado SR-60 headphones and navigating the Internet. Somehow, listening to Internet radio in a public computer lab is more satisfying; it’s like a forbidden fruit, even though they supply you with a miniplug hookup specifically for headphones. Well, I can still pretend.
First off, I must correct you, Jason: getting beat by “9 points,” as you state here, is a blowout in boxing. It’s like getting beat 121-87 in basketball, or 11-3 in baseball. It means you got your ass kicked.
And to continue the boxing theme, perhaps an analogy should be made between this weekend’s joke of a heavyweight bout and the joke of a bout going on in BLOGWARS™. I should ask: which is closer, Mary vs. nickd, or Tyson vs. Etienne? Or perhaps more appropriately, which landed harder: this barrage from Mary or this right from Tyson? I’m inclined to choose the former. Perhaps we should just start calling Mr. Disabato the “White Rhino” from now on?
Ah, yes, which nicely segues into my take on Ms. Jones unbridled barrage on nickd… or was it really directed at nickd? h0 h0 h0, she seems to have looked past her present opponent to the championship and offered several pointed barbs for (gasp) me! Well, everyone knows that I can’t keep my mouth shut when challenged, so let’s see what the Chancellor of Chastity, the Countess of Cocktease, has to say about me, shall we?
Mmm, first, let me link the entry again — and for those of you who are infrequent visitors to the Capitalist Mafia page, please brace yourselves — you’re about to witness a triumph of HTML splendor. But I digress. Let us move on to the content…
So now Jones responds to Konik’s insults about her taste in music, huh? How timely! You are like the child late for school running after the bus with her pants around her ankles. I pity you not.
And then about the men’s movement… now while I can’t exactly argue that about it’s “mentally-masturbatory” status (hey, by the way — you needn’t hyphenate that, dear … just an FYI from an anthro major), I can question the source, and the source is… ta-da! A poetry major! Woo! I thought that shit died with William Wordsworth! All poetry is good for is gettin poonani (ask Ali G). And hey, one more thing: if you want mentally-masturbatory, click here. (Sorry Mark, but hell, she dated ya. :)
So let’s just consider that an opening statement, a preface of sorts, Ms. Jones, because I’m gonna tear you up in the championship. I know it might get downright nasty — and no, I’m not talking about your hair. But I’m playin to win, baby.
p.s. I took half the Nuge pics on that post. Thanks for the BLOGWARS™ points, babe.
Ahh. Waking up from a nap — now that just throws everything off. My whole sense of time is destroyed for the day. Of course, the reset button is a full night’s sleep, but that’s hours and hours away. Oh well, I think the pleasure of sleep in the middle of the day is worth it.
So yesterday I mentioned that hip hop should not be valorized. Quite by serendipidity, things got a little rough at a contest for MTV’s Hip Hop Week, thus providing me with the perfect example to support my hypothesis. Hip hop deserves no admiration.
Now, I will be the first to admit that hip hop is catchy music. In fact, I love it, and I have since I was 13. There was a time when I was even a regular wiggeris classicus, truth be told. But every year, as February — that vaunted “Black History Month,” time of nauseating TV specials dedicated to one race and one race only — rolls around, we hear about what a fabulous art form hip hop is. We hear about how it tells the story of the street and the ghetto. We hear about how it offers project youth a “way out.” For good measure, perhaps we even hear some do-gooder prof talk about oral tradition among the African-American community (sorry, that’s the anthro major in me talking).
But let’s be honest. Let’s look at today’s hip hop for what it is: you’ve got a simple beat that any high schooler can make and someone freestyling over it. Two elements. Beat and talk. The former sounds cute, but takes no talent. Let’s talk about the latter. Let’s talk about what everyone gives the rappers respect for, that is, the flow.
Now I should not be too cavalier in my assessment of hip hop. I never said it was easy, and there’s no way I could freestyle. It’s a skill, one might even say an art, and it takes talent and practice. But guess what? So does unicycling. So does juggling. So do gymnastics. So does writing term papers. So does debating. Nothing separates freestyling, the second constituent part of hip hop, from any other skill in terms of the talent and practice required to effectively practice it. So let us now move to its content.
And herein lies the problem. The content of hip hop sucks. Why is Eminem popular? BECAUSE HIS SONGS ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE. The other guys are so fucking worried about rhyming that their lyrics make no sense! Have you ever read the lyrics? I mean seriously, tried to decipher the meaning behind this shit? It’s disgraceful, downright disgraceful. When an MC comes along who can flow, who can rhyme, and who can actually string a few coherent thoughts together — well hell, that’s a recipe for success. But precisely because there are so few of those out there — and sorry Puffy, but you belong to the rule, not its exception — my disdain for this so-called art-form remains high.
Of course, beyond these music-oriented criticisms, I could criticize the culture itself. The hip hop culture — or the culture which values hip hop, in any case — has produced the famous Biggie-Tupac tragedy, but also countless other murders and lesser casualties stemming directly and indirectly from the general hooliganism promoted in hip hop. Now, although I do feel like a stodgy seventy-something for employing the phrase “general hooliganism,” I do not think it appropriate to praise hip hop as a cultural category when it carries this much baggage — one might even say collateral damage (in the vernacular of the day). In the post-Columbine days, for example, zealots were eagerly waggling their fingers at first-person shooting games as the cause of the tragedy. Yet somehow, the hip hop industry seems to be spared much of the same criticism when those in its community are gunned down day in and day out, and all the new rap music does is glorify this lifestyle. I’m not saying hip hop is the cause, but I am saying it doesn’t alleviate the problem one damn bit.
As a society, we don’t valorize heavy metal. We don’t valorize punk. We don’t valorize emo (THANK GOD!). So why the hell do we valorize hip hop? I’ll leave you to figure out the answer to that.
It’s odd to me how quickly two people can diverge when circumstances dictate that they’re never going to see each other again. Case in point: the ex-girlfriend. Or hell, maybe I was just clueless about the girl when we were going out. Now granted, all of my knowledge of her presently comes from her website, but I’m constantly left thinking, “how did I date this girl?” Besides my own doubts, two recent events merely fueled the fire.
Yeah, I’d say we’ve diverged.
Gio’s was fine. Nickd insisted that I’m mean to everyone, including my friends, but I take this essentially as one would take Puff Daddy telling you that you sold out. That is, not very seriously. I distributed Ali G CDROMs to the posse, and I’m eagerly awaiting feedback from the kids who’ve never seen him before. IM me.
I was going to write something humorous, but… I lack the energy and the spark. But I’m not depressed, nor am I down. I’m steady. I’m solid, I’m here, but I ain’t on a fuggin Web site.
FYI, I added descriptions of the battles to the BLOGWARS™ results.
I’m tired. I got a lot done today, which was excellent. Maybe I’ll do even a bit more in lieu of blogging. Good day.
Hey MSU, that must have hurt. You gonna be able to sit down tomorrow?
Once in a while, I become fixated on an unconventional object and the purchase of it becomes quite important to me. Remember the dilly with the cheap sunglasses? Well, I decidedly recently that staplers are very important to me. Staplers are such useful implements, and a good stapler lasts for years and years. In fact, in the study at home, my mom has a stapler that is at least 40 years old, probably more. So tonight, I set off for Office Max with the primary goal of finding a durable stapler to accompany me in my journey through life.
The Swingline Classic 747 stapler is the choice. I’m sure you’ll recognize it, since it is Swingline’s most popular model. It combines rugged all-metal construction and sleek styling. My stapler is beige, a choice with which I initially was disappointed when I realized it came in the other colors listed on that page. After pondering the matter further, however, I realized that beige is more utilitarian and unassuming than the other colors and thus more suited to a stapler, I think. Score for beige.
But enough with the blogsturbation (I take issue with this definition, mind you). I haven’t been blogging a lot lately, but that doesn’t mean things haven’t been going on, or even that I’ve been down. Life is changing, thoughts are vivid. My experience seems richer. The undulations are less pronounced. It is one of those odd things: I know I am changing, growing, becoming a better and new person, but I can’t explain that to another person.
So, to make an awkward segue, let’s talk a bit about BLOGWARS™. The only match worth commenting on is the Adele-Anne battle, which was extraordinarily close. I felt Adele landed some good shots with her photo-essays, but ultimately Anne’s unrelenting, technically proficient attack carried the day. Probably the difference-maker was the post on lesbian showering, which generated drama outside the blogs amongst non-blog people–surely a noteworthy accomplishment.
Round 2 features nickd vs. Mary Jones and Anne House vs. me. Let it be known that if any more of nickd’s “fanboys” (what this means, I do not know, but I’m rather afraid to ask, ya FAG) IM me and hassle me, nickd will immedately forfeit his match against Mary.