Together

I have the ACT next week on Thursday, so I'm not going to want to write a blog entry then. I'll take the opportunity to write a little something right now.

Think of this blog entry as a continuation of the "Alone" entry, especially in the goofy nonsense way.

My "Alone" playlist will have to wait; I will now search for the word "together"

There are significantly more songs in the Alone playlist than in the Together playlist. This is obviously indicative of the nature music has taken these days. Music these days is bad because it's fashionable to dislike things these days, especially music! While I'm at it, popular music is bad too!!! Wow, I sure am edgy!

I sometimes find it difficult to be together with others because I'm such a nonconformist rebel and I make fun of all the popular things everyone else likes. Everyone else is on the other side of this issue; underground music exists in the absence of a market for it because I'm the only person that has any taste in music and listens to anything but mainstream garbage!! What an anomaly! Everyone knows that if something has more than a couple fans it can't be good!

I'm done with that now I think.

My together playlist is pretty good. I kinda like the lyrics in the song playing now.

Alone

This blog entry will be total stream of consciousness blather (with a semi-humorous tone).

The Strokes have a song called Alone, Together - pretty similar to this week's and next week's blog entry titles!!! Seems like copyright infringement to me!!!

Being alone means being by oneself; it means being without company. Sometimes it can be fun to be alone if you have fun being alone. Other times, it is useful to be around others.

I know a song that has a lyric "have you ever been alone in a crowded room?" called Dark Blue. I think that song is by Jack's Mannequin, but I can't quite remember. It's a pretty good song, but it is alone in that it's the only Jack's Mannequin song I've really listened to very much. That actually isn't true; I've listened to a few others I think. It's only nearly alone then. I wrote a blog entry that had a little about aloneness earlier this week, but it was a bit more serious than I want to be with this entry, so I'll leave them separate (or alone!!!)

Thinking about the two songs I've mentioned so far in this blog entry, I decided to search my itunes library for the word "alone" and it made a pretty interesting little playlist. I think I'll go listen to those songs now.

Save the Earth, Do this!

We shouldn't do anything to save the Earth; the Earth isn't worth saving. In the grand meaninglessness of life in this universe, there is no purpose to ensuring the survival of any given planet. To assign any objective value to the one we live on is an attempt to impose meaning on a pointless system. Also, to save the Earth as it is assumes that its current state is preferable to one in which it is not saved. Global warming causing mass extinction isn't a bad thing just because it's inconvenient for our species. There is no saving the Earth, just existing on it.

Invisible

Sometimes invisibility does not have to be caused by something or someone being unable to be seen, but rather by the refusal of others to see. Everyone is invisible to the majority of the world, since any given person isn't likely to be known by even their entire city, excluding small towns. Even people with significant fame, people that are known by others all around the world, are invisible because few know them personally. All of this assumes that we could ever really truly know another person's innermost self. In class, Bill Gates was given as an example of a visible person because "if he wants something he could get it" or some other silly reasoning, but that assumption itself makes Bill Gates invisible. We assume we understand Bill Gates because he we see his desires or actions, all while never bothering to question whether those are really his true desires. Maybe Bill Gates is a completely different person than the majority of those that know of him perceive him to be; we would never really know. Everyone is invisible, so it's a somewhat fruitless topic for conversation. Also, it seems really melodramatic to think that everyone should or even could focus on knowing an invisible person. It's really ironic how, in a book pointing out that we don't bother to understand others, the characterization is so poor. Maybe it was intentional.

A Book to Read

Well that is typically what books are for. I think I'll take this chance to actually speak on topic. So far, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man has been a somewhat major letdown. Ralph Ellison does a very poor job of writing an engaging novel. I mostly only feel apathetic in regard to his protagonist. I'm given very little reason to care about what happens to a character that really isn't very compelling whatsoever. Poignant social commentary or not, a narrative is a failure if it feels like a chore to pick it up. It might be only me, but I'm only continuing with reading it because I want to be done with it so I can move onto something more interesting. To be fair, I'll open my own selection to criticism. The next thing I will read will most likely be How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen.

Movie Review

I've decided to give up TV for lent (mostly for the purpose of freeing up time), so I'm actually not sure what movie I last saw outside of school. As such, I think I'll just talk about the movies we've watched in class. I did rather like Exit Through the Gift Shop, but I didn't think it was anything spectacular. Do the Right Thing was awful. I was really bored while we watched that, so I mostly just tried to tune it out and read or do something else. The movie adaptation of The Autobiography of Malcolm X left very much to be desired as well. All excuses of time constraints aside, valid as they are, it was a mediocre movie. Since those are the only two movies directed by Spike Lee I've seen (that I know of) I think I can safely say he's off to a poor start in my book. I don't intend on watching any more of his movies, however, so I guess that's how it'll stay. I didn't really care about the Copyright Criminals thing. I've heard good things about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so I'm looking forward to seeing the end of that and commend this selection. The Road was probably by far the worst movie we've seen to date.