Addictions: Hours into the Night

There are millions of citizens of first and second world countries that spend hours upon hours indoors, hooked up to a monitor, up for all hours of the night. Is this a new revolution in entertainment, or a detriment to natural human life? I’ve been asking myself this question for months now, as I’m one of the millions under the same spell.

We can share loads of media over this internet. I mean, just look at social sites. Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, even google+ (*tch*). Thousands upon thousands of people are constantly posting information about their lives, about what’s going on around them, what interests them and what they hate. There’s so much interaction now, how could this be a bad thing?! The world is so much smaller, and ideas spread so much more quickly! We simply can’t be losing anything.

Welp, that’s just it.

What with the trend in the necessity for instant gratification that started after the World Wars (buying things on credit), we’ve been losing sight of what we actually have as opposed to what we own. Sure, you might have a huge 80-inch TV in 1080p, but what does that do for you other than expose you to mre media that promotes bigger, better TVs, and a bigger, better life?

Exactly. The material possessions we have are absolutely meaningless except when considered in their own context. We waste so much time just sitting and doing nothing – what with games, television, and the endless stream of content on the internet, that we hardly even exist in the real world anymore. Few people are outside on a beautiful day in the park, and some will even look at you weird if you just lay down by a creek and take a nap if you aren’t in a campsite. I mean, what is the world coming to, that we can’t live our lives outside of our own homes, detached from the things other people made?

I myself am attached to my instruments. I know I truly own them (or I will, once I pay my parents back). I play them every day and produce something the world has never experienced before – sound that is uniquely my style, uniquely me. Not one other person can take that away from me – my instruments are my own, and my voice will always be with me, even if I have no tuba, piano, trombone, or drums.

Music Review 01: The Black Keys

I sure am late to the party, but…

The Black Keys have been rocking my playlist recently. Their sound has something to it that other modern rock bands just don’t possess. I’d attribute it to their blues/rock fusion: in many songs , they use distortion that gives them a ‘dirty’ sound, and back this with a driving yet minimal drum line. Their blues style focuses their lyrics around the woes of life: many of their songs scream of long-lost unpleasant exes that were worth it for a week but not a year, and of losing brothers or family to death or time. This bluesyness also sets them up for tons of minor-key riffs, which just pulls me in when I’m not in the mood for anything particularly bright and fluffy.

If you’ve been listening to any radio that plays modern alternative, rock, or blues, it’s more than likely that you’ve heard one of their most popular songs: Howlin’ for You. If you haven’t give it a listen. It’s exactly what I began talking about earlier: got the driving blues sound, wailing for life.

What surprises me most is that this band was originally composed of just two guys: Dan Auerback and Patrick Camey on drums and guitar/bass. These are still their primary members, but when their songs branch out into multiple different instruments, they have enough renown to hire backup instrumentalists.

I was introduced to this style of music by my brother Kyle a while ago, and didn’t particularly buy into it at first. After a while, the anger and sadness of it seeped into me, and I felt a resonance with it all, eventually coming to love this blues. Now I’ve expanded my repertoire, but I’m still looking for new bands to listen to. If anyone has any suggestions, please, post in the comments your ideas.

The Hunger Games: Movie/Book

So. The Hunger Games. Huge deal. The new Twilight?
I don’t doubt it.

 It appeals to more than just the romantic mush and bullcrap that Twilight contains: there’s substance that we can apply to the modern world contained within the story. A dictatorial nation has come to dominate the United States. And isn’t that a fun idea? Divide everyone up after their resistance falls, keep them in line, and bam, dictatorship. The world is surprisingly believable, and crafted well enough, though oftentimes I feel as though I’m not getting all the details. Take the Capitol, for example. A huge freaking city that sprawls and has futuristic technology just flourishing everywhere. But as a reader, we’re hardly given a glimpse of this. There is an excuse: because Katniss is always trapped by the constraints of the system. But this cannot explain the lack of resolution when there are scenes that could be extremely detailed, and incredibly beautiful.

When Katniss and Peeta are riding in their carriages, I got the idea of what was happening. All eyes were on them, there was little attention paid to anyone else. But I was simply told that. There were minor demonstrations and maneuvers to make me believe – the fact that the crowd was screaming, the nature of cameras and the comments by the overseers. To me, it still felt like there just wasn’t enough definition.

I’d like to compare this to when I’m devising a situation for my dungeons and dragons players to experience. My writing motto is, ‘show, don’t tell,’ and I do just that when I place them in a new realm. I go to any length to explain the details.

There’s a marked difference between:

“You see two prongs that extend out into the water, forming a bay filled with many ships. The docks are beaten and worn due to their age: it seems as though they could be centuries old.”

and,

“The water laps on either side of the land’s extended arms, glistening in the bright sunlight. The air clings to your skin and makes you feel like you’re half breathing, half drowning due to its saturation. As you glance out into the bay, you see what is easily identifiable as an entire fleet of imperial ships, their trademark white and red sails glistening in the sunlight, no doubt recently painted with the blood of fresh victims. The reek of death crawls up and into your being, and sends a chill down your spine.

Examining the docks, you see that they’ve been around for centuries. The older sections are made from Elderwood no doubt crafted by Elves before they set sail across the Wide Sea. The ‘newer’ sections are made of retained steel, resistant to rust but still not indestructible. They are beaten by the waves and covered in barnacles. The bustle of the bay is dying down as the sun is setting and the Imperial sailors are in the Tavern District.”

Sorry, sunk into a trance there.

Anyway, the contrast here is easy to notice in the Hunger Games as well. There are scenes where not enough is present to flesh the world out…

When the World Ends: Why Are We Obsessed?

Okay, so obsession with the end of the world and the entirety of existence is nothing new. The Mayans were, Christians still are, and many other religions and philosophies center around the world ending. So why is humanity so concerned with its own demise?

I think this originates in our already extremely anthropocentric societies. We're just obsessed with ourselves! The gods - the creators of the entire universe - are in OUR image. Most of humanity (excluding a few certain systems of belief) focus entirely on OUR progress, OUR ideals and interactions, what is moral concerning HUMANITY and nothing else.

So when we ponder the divine, we often consider the end of OUR existence. And we make light of it, too. 99.9% of the time, humans make it out alive, with a good lesson learned, or something crazy like that. It's rare that we ever truly fail when it comes to saving our own asses in our stories.
But of course this is true. Noone wants to hear the story of an epic hero that challenges the odds and fails miserably.

But this is the most likely outcome. And it won't be some crazy meteor, or aliens, or some catastrophic environmental collapse. It will be our own doing. We'll nuke each other and kill everyone off. Or just suck the environment dry until there's just nothing left, and the earth will be as barren as Mars is today.

This still doesn't answer the question: why are we so obsessed? The only real answer to that is because it makes a compelling story. We like to imagine a desolate world where we still find a way to survive, and even thrive. Because humanity has done it so many times already. We've survived ice ages, droughts, and storms beyond comparison. It's inflated our ego.

Someday, this will all come crashing down.