Space Cadet

Yay! It's my 500th post. :juggle: I got so tired of people insulting each other's threads, I thought I'd start my own. Feel free to tell me how stupid I am for trying if you must, but please keep it to PM's Anyway, my point: What does count as "good" anyway? I mean in the context of music or a movie or a brand of chocolate. Why do people seem to feel the need to put others down for their tastes? Granted, something sloppily put together but successful due to mass marketing will always have a certain amount of justified stigma. But then there are genuine examples of "the cream rising to the top" where something became big because it was useful, very well done, perhaps even truly artistic, AND it was in the right place at the right time. But because it becomes popular and therefore a "bandwagon" there are always people who insist that it is crap. I'm not talking about jealousy, although that is sometimes a factor. I'm talking about people who will honestly settle for an inferior product resentfully thinking that it is better just because the superior one is popular due to marketing. Or here are some examples: :book2: It took me many years to read the Harry Potter books in spite of being a fantasy geek because it was a bandwagon, and people were saying it was unoriginal, so I stayed away. I finally started reading them recently. Yes, the elements come from a hodgepodge of every fantasy story that has ever gone before, but the WRITING in the stories is BRILLIANT. It has been years since I was so totally sucked into a world. Many authors try to do that and very, very few succeed. Yet people complain about them being to common. Dido: my musical guilty pleasure. I’ll admit it. I have heard people put her down more times than I care to think about. The assumption is that she is popular, and very heavily produced, and therefore crap. "They" say that listening to Dido is being too obvious and bland. Yet the reason she sounds the way she does is because her brother is a very talented producer. That ought to count for something, shouldn't it? The real reason I like her though, is that every song, rather than being a whiny heartfelt "this is how I feel" moment is a tiny short story about all sorts of things. There is a reason (I'm saying this based on personal experience) that aspiring writers like writing novels. In a novel, there is a lot of space to make your point. In a short story, all the elements of a novel are condensed into just a few pages or less. There is no room for error. Once sentence can change the meaning of the entire story. Now try to do that in the lyrics of a song. It's even more condensed. Sometimes one WORD can change the entire meaning. Throw in a chorus that has to repeat and tie the song together, and you've got yourself quite the puzzle. No wonder most songwriters simply resort to personal experience. Me, I like being told stories, and I like when someone puts the effort into making a song a story, therefore I like Dido. Not only do I listen to people tell me why such and such a musical taste is horrid, but they consider themselves superior for being immune to such trash. Why is that? Thoughts anyone?

I was just playing Swallowed in the Sea on my guitar this afternoon. Not very well though- my dad keeps asking me when I'm going to learn how to play "real songs"- way to be encouraging, Dad. :freak: :laugh4: (I'm still just learning how to play at all)

All my relatives helped pay for my trip to Ireland for my graduation. It's pretty normal to have gifts at grad.

I always wanted to dye my hair all multicoloured like the girl in the Bourne Identity at the beggining of the movie... but I'm too chicken.

I think he did it with some of the people from Belle and Sebastian as well as some of the other local musicians. I get the impression that it was a huge collaboration sort of along the same lines as Broken Social Scene maybe...?

There's also Gary Lightbody's side project band "The Reindeer Section" that has a couple of albums out. I've been lazy and haven't gotten around to listening to them, but I have a friend who loves them and bugs me about it.

At the moment, Please Make This Go On Forever. Isn't there are whole thread for this, though?

Oh my goodness... *grabs mc_squared and Reilly by the ear and gives their heads a good shake before clonking them together* 2 different styles. BOTH seem to work. Reilly makes me think. Turkeys was so totally random that for a brief moment at least people were talking. Will you please grow up a bit. People are so worried about "good" and bad threads around here that there's not too much to talk about. I'm sick of the arguing. The board needs you both. GAH! :(

Historically speaking, the ancient world did believe that the heart served the functions that we now associate with the brain, both thinking and feeling. I would have to double check this, but if I remember right, it wasn't until doctors started doing some rather cruel surgeries on convicted criminals, such as cutting the victim's heart out and asking them questions before they died that it was proved that the heart was not actually the centre of thought. Or I might be perpetuating an old wives' tale... it been awhile.

Anything with a harddrive has a danger of dying on you. That's just the risk you take. I wish I had an ipod or something with more storage, but my minidisk player has certainly never let me down so far.

HUGE BUMP! The series finale is on tonight. I'm not sure whether to be sad or excited. It's time has come- and gone, really. But man I loved this show. J.J. Abrams is my hero. :cool:

Oh man, I freaked when Vincent brought the statue. I was like "nooo... just ignore it, Charlie don't go back." I was so sure he wasn't going to throw the last one in. Glad I was wrong.

Yay Star Wars! :D The foundation of an entire generation's imagination... Love the x-wing smiley.

Why you calling Sidney Crosby a two year old? :thinking:

Pizza

I saw it on youtube... Yeah, the band did look good, but they had way too much makeup on Matt.

:shocked2: Your cat looks almost exactly like a cat named Mittens that I used to have. She wasn't fat either, but people always said she was.

What the.... They're multiplying again! :shocked3: :speechless: What's with all the crazy people who keep refering to themselves in the third person and spoiling all the fun around here??! :inquisitive: :bigcry: :bigcry: :bigcry: Whoever invented the ignore list was a genius. :idea2: (edited because my brain is currently on summer vacation :P )

Welcome to the club. Though they taste good... :sneaky:

:laugh3: That's how I ended up eating Walkers! I saw them and thought they were Lay's, then realised they said "crisps" instead of chips... It made sense after that, though because the guy who runs the store is from England and imports all sorts of stuff, like all the types of Cadbury's chocolate that isn't sold around here.

Well, I'm boring. My favorites are the plain Lay's. Just a bit of salt and a ton of grease, and I'm happy. Except for the part afterwards where I feel sick from eating junkfood.

:laugh3: That would be taking it literally...

:P Wolves more like it... :dozey: ETA: I looked it up, and couldn't find anything about wild turkeys living in Nova Scotia, but that kind of makes sense since the terrain is so different. Down in the states they live in the big hardwood forrests. Up here, it's mainly softwood like pines, so different veggitation to eat.

Marmite. We don't have veggimite either that I know of. For toast, people usually just use jam or peanut butter.

Toast with butter... will do. Except it doesn't even exist over here.