Violence

It's come to a sad point in my life, where I look back on what atrocities have been committed in the name of things I stand for. Back when I was a freshman, one could associate me with the gothic subculture, although I was a self proclaimed metalhead. People like me always got a bad rep, because we were outcasts of a society that shunned anything it deemed too dark. However in 1999, when I was six years old, the person I would later become became a scapegoat for cold blooded murder. The Columbine Massacre, in which 13 people were killed. Gothic subculture became the reason, Marilyn Manson became the devil, and the world went on a witch hunt. And during my time as a member of this hated group, I felt something strange. Like who I was was evil. Like I was dark and weird, and alienated, because the media said I was.

Me circa 2007.

However, as I grew into different tastes and got out of the group, I felt even more like this type of alienation wasn't fair. Isn't fair. My friends who continued to listen to heavy music were sometimes labeled as misfits, or violent prone, due exclusively to their dressing styles. Sometimes while kids where boots and chain pants, you can hear kids whisper "When is he gonna shoot up a school?" But nothing could be farther from the truth. Half the time gothic kids are some of the nicest kids you'll meet, and treat eachother like family. So why the stereotyping?

The reason is media insanity. They need someone to blame for tragedy, right? Why not the band with the androgynous howling creature as a vocalist? (Although credit to Marilyn Manson for an essay he wrote on the matter, http://www.antilife.org/files/marilyn.html ) He seems too weird to fit in, and thus must be violent! Must hate America! Must want kids to kill eachother!

The "face of evil."

Anyone with a brain can see Manson is a parody of darkness in our society, a ridiculous over the top show of emotion. But not the mainstream media, they saw a monster, a creature, someone who hated everything they stood for.

I urge you to think before you blame.
Think about all the kids who died that day, or on any future tragic event.
Think about the shooters.
Remember, they're the only ones to blame.

When you begin to blame anyone else but the people responsible, you put power into the hands of the individual. It gets to a point where someone can murder a person, and when the cops arrive, tell him TV made him do it, and suddenly, he's a victim of television's evils!

Take the blame from the alternative, and put it into who's really to blame.

Facebook Vs Myspace Vs Twitter And Other Such Shit

Social networking has become an important fixture in life today. It seems you're not quite human until you're connected to your friends nonsense via the web. So, what sit do you pick? Most likely today, you pick Facebook, but no more than four years ago, you'd be crazy if you picked anything but Myspace. Why?

I've always found it to be where the whole web was going, not just social networking. When Myspace came around, it embodied everything good about the internet. Music, videos, color, excitement! But recently the "Web 2.0" movement has toned down the internet to sleek white and boring drab fonts. Facebook embodies that. Business, no color, no music, no fun. The "Great Migration" from Myspace to Facebook (taking place in Summer of 2008 for where I live) was a weird sight to behold. People gave up comments, gave up bulletins, gave up layouts and music, all of a sudden, for a white and blue boring dry erase board on the interwebz.

But what about Twitter? To be honest, I never "got" Twitter. It's sort of just like Status Updates and that's it. You get that on Facebook. And Myspace. And even like fucking MyYearbook.com and other failed abominations. Twitter isn't special, not even slightly.

So who knows whats in the future? Maybe we all leave Facebook and go join VampireFreaks.com.

Maybe....

Me being a hypocrite; check out my faceybook!
www.facebook.com/macdaddy41

What time is it? ADVENTURE TIME!

It's painstakingly obvious television nowadays is awful. However, it seems to have one saving grace, and it comes from an unusual source. A cartoon. On Cartoon Network. It's called Adventure Time, and new episodes are on Monday at 8.



The show is a nonsense filled adventure of a human named Finn and a dog namd Jake who live in the land of Ooo. It's brilliantly written, hilarious, and even a tad adult at times. It's random in a quirky way, and never ceases to be a riot. It's animated beautifully and in HD. Everything about it is original and clever, and leaves you wondering, why can't TV be more like this?

The answer is, it can. Cartoon Network has other classic cartoons clearly meant for an older audience than advertised. (Flapjack is my favorite of them.) Adult Swim's original programming is pretty awesome too, Metalocalypse and even crazy shows such as Superjail are most people's pleasures.

I've found the best American programming tends to be cartoons, because they can stay fresh and can be produced more often than live action shows.

So, do yourself a favor and check out Adventure Time. You'll be glad ya did. MATHEMATICAL!

Sports (and How They're Fuckin' Ruined)

Sports are an important part in the lives of many Americans. But lately I've felt that sports aren't as special as they used to be.

Let's look at the first example, LeBron James and his recent highly publicized debacle over what team to abandon his hometown for. (The fact that he abandoned Cleveland makes me angry enough, but I digress.) It was like picking the President of the Goddamn United States, every basketball fan was glued to television sets in anticipation. and that's exactly the first thing that's wrong with sports. Its all a big stunt now, publicity and money making tactics overshadow the true meaning of the past-time of sports. Players have no feel for the game, they just are out to make a name for themselves. If they DID have a true love for the game, they wouldn't abandon the team they've played with for years just to make headline news and win a championship.

Secondly, the death of George Steinbrenner today reminded me of something. The Yankees are an overpayed team of celebrities who hardly even play baseball because they're so god damn good at it it's unfair. Baseball isn't even a sport so much as popularity contest and spend-athon. Have enough money? Enjoy your championship.

And even my sport of choice, Football, isn't safe. Doing away with the Salary Cap is making good teams better, and poor teams with no Bowls under their belt are going to wallow in self pity (atleast for another year.) Where's the fairness in that?

So, what are your opinions on Sports?

Musical Stylings (And Why Elitists Just Don't Get It)

Music is truly an art meant to be in the eye of the beholder, and what is a gem to one man is filth to another. For example: the adult generation of the start of Rock And Roll hated it, and completely denounced its status as music. Now their kids (the rock and roll fans, the rebels, the very same people who said "fuck you" to the establishment) are adults who denounce more extreme forms of music. So why the hypocrisy?

Music is always changing, always becoming new, and generation who is out of the loop simply won't get it, that's always been a fact. My generation can't understand why their parents hate hip hop, but in a few decades, we'll hate our kids music just as equally. (Most likely for good reason, the future is bound to have PowerTechnoAcidHouse as a staple genre, I can just feel it.)

But the real crime against music is elitists. People who HATE YOU for YOUR GARBAGE MUSIC. We've all met these folks, who think every band you like is a mockery of real music. Real music that was performed once and only heard by a group of seven people before the band killed themselves so they didn't go "mainstream." Although there are certain "bands" everyone should agree are terrible (Brokencyde, Insane Clown Posse) music truly is an art of taste. There's no "good" or "bad" in music, right?

So what do you think Blogosphere? Can music be good or bad? Or is it all a matter of preference? Comments are welcomed, if not encouraged. See ya folks tomorrow with a more pressing subject matter.

METAL!!!!

I'm getting set to go see Iron Maiden in concert tonight at PNC Arts Center in Holmdel NJ. Figured it'd be the perfect time to talk about something that's been in my life for what seems like forever. Heavy fucking metal. Although I'm much more inclined to bump hip hop nowadays, metal helped raise me as the music lover I am, so I leave you with one of my favorite metal gems ever! KEEP IT BRUTAL!

The State of Video Gaming (And The Future)

I thought I'd start off this brand new blog with something on a lot of people's minds right now, the lack of a true original spirit left in videogaming. The truth is, E3 this year was just an assortment of gimmicks and modern warfare first person shooters. So what's left for gamers, and what does the future hold?

A lot of people forget the game industry nearly died before. This isn't the first time people have been questioning the content or originality of gaming. Console gaming's first years were met with multiple failures and a seemingly inevitable collapse of the market. The technology was too limited to do anything new or exciting and the fans craved more. However, as the technology expanded, so did gaming, to go on into the 80s being a quite profitable entertainment medium.

So have we reached a stalemate in technology? The thing that troubles me the most is no, we haven't. In fact, we're coming out with TOO MUCH new innovations. Sure, the Wii is fun as hell, but it's not gaming in a true sense to many folks out there. It's too filled with kiddie games and work out simulators to be called a "gaming console." It's mostly a gimmick, that, in my eyes at least, is strangling originality in true gaming. Xbox's Kinect is no better. Do you remember Eyetoy? Do you remember how every game released for the Playstation 2 in those few years had a mandatory "Eyetoy Addon" whether it was taking pictures of you or using your movement to do trivial actions ingame? Do you remember how stupid it was? The new gimmicks of today are going to suffer the same fate.

On another end of the spectrum, in "traditional gaming," ideas seem trite as well. This year or two around six almost identical FPS' are set to be released (Modern Warfare 2, Medal of Honor, Battlefield, just to name a few.) So is the console gaming market dying? Short answer? No. Long answer? Noooooo.

Gaming is just milking a cash cow in two ways (peripherals and modern FPS') This is no way means the game industry is dying, nor does it implicate a sad future for gaming. This has happened before. How many GTA clones were there? Gaming's still alive after that, right? I rest my case.

Originality still lives, by the way! The Bioshock series is certainly interesting, and Fez on the Arcade. But we might have to wait a year or two before something mind blowing comes out.