Music and Earthquakes

Have you ever been riding down the road, minding your own business, and sitting peacefully in your car, when suddenly you feel............ an earthquake?! The steering wheel begins to shake in your hands, noise is everywhere, and your car is vibrating. You look around panicked, watching for collapsing buildings, and then, all of a sudden you spot the real culprit: a small red sports car sitting next to you in traffic. The feelings of fear dissipate and two new emotions emerge, annoyance and wonder. How can such a small car blast out music at a volume that makes your teeth chatter? More importantly, why do these individuals feel the need to destroy our eardrums along with their own. I like my hearing the way it is, thank you.

The loosely defined music doesn't bother me all that much in and of itself. I can grit my teeth to keep them from breaking, and last the two minutes or so until the red light turns green. That I can handle. What I can't handle is the lyrics that go along with it. It seems to me that eight out of ten times I can distinguish words amongst the music, they seem to be very derogatory rap songs. I'm sorry, but I dislike having every cuss word under the sun blasted at me against my will. If I had wanted to hear that I would it playing on my station, which I don't. Not only are they blaring cuss words at me, but most of the songs are very degrading towards, well everybody, but especially women. Yeah, yeah, I know that the content of rap songs is an on-going debate about music today and I don't want to start that here. Personally, I believe you should be able to listen to whatever you want. However, just because you want to listen to it, doesn't me that everyone within a two-mile radius wants to listen to it as well. Save your eardrums and turn down the volume.

I do occasionally hear the random country or pop song playing while I'm ducking for cover in my car, and that's not a problem for me. As a general rule, the lyrics to those songs won't be cussing me out while I'm trying to have a good day, so I can let it roll of my back, and even in the rarest of moments bob my head to the beat.

Now, my rant is over and I have about five minutes to post this before I miss my midnight deadline. Like I said in my first post, I am hell bent and glory bound to get at least one post up before midnight every day. Talk to you tomorrow.

~If there is any specific topic you would like me to write about, send me an e-mail at BriarBlack@hotmail.com~

When Anime wasn't cool.

There is a country song titled "I was country, when country wasn't cool", well, at times I feel like I should rename it "I was anime, when anime wasn't cool." Yes, I admit it. I enjoy watching anime and reading manga, although my obsession has waned in recent years. I just don't have the time for it I used to, or the money. However, in years past, starting when I was around eleven, I was completely obsessed with anime.

I was that dorky kid that got laughed at for pulling out an Inuyasha manga after finishing my work in class, and heaven forbid that you join the anime club. The anime club was minuscule, maybe ten people showed up meetings. Maybe. Then they were mocked for it. Face it folks, anime was not popular. It was not even really socially accepted. I remember my mother asking my why I liked "those witchcraft promoting shows", and my non-anime loving friends rolling their eyes every time I mentioned it.

Now, anime is taking off like wildfire!! Just go to any movie store and you will find that their anime selection is huge, and quite frequently, in large bookstores the anime section is larger than the youth fiction! Talk about a one-eighty turnaround. It's quite common to see people reading manga, and the anime clubs are ridiculously large, and don't even get me started on the cons. When there is a con in town anime lovers come flooding out of the wood work. Quite honestly I don't know where there hiding the rest of the time. Probably under rocks somewhere.

Yep guys, anime has become a popular thing to be interested in. Kinda scary, huh?

~If there is a specif topic you would like me to write about, send me an e-mail at BriarBlack@hotmail.com~

Common Sayings

Have you ever heard the saying "A doubting Thomas"? I'm pretty sure almost everyone has at one point in time. It is just one of those American idioms that everyone knows. Now, I have just one question: What do Thomas's think of that saying?! I mean, does that saying give them a complex? Do they think that because their name is Thomas they have to doubt everything they hear? I can hear Thomas's everywhere now:

Random Person: Hey what did you think of that movie we just saw?
Thomas: I don't know. I'm doubting.

Honestly, these poor individuals don't stand a chance, and how about the saying "A New York minute"? What makes New York minutes any better than, lets say, Chicago minutes? Are Chicago minutes somehow inferior to New York minutes? Jeez, talk about a superiority complex.

I was also told recently "Close but no cigar". I don't like cigars. I don't want a cigar. If I had gotten the answer right, would they have forced me to take a cigar?! Then I'm glad I answered wrongly, thank you very much.

Then there is the saying "Who let the cat out of the bag"? In that case, I have another question for you: Who put the cat in the bag? Just what was that cat doing in that bag, and does the local SPCA know about this? Somebody alert PETA because people are walking around with bags full of cats! That can't be ethical.

Someone asked me the other day if I wanted "A cup of Joe". No I do not, and exactly what part of Joe is in that cup? Did Joe consent to this, or should I be calling the police? Don't even think about telling me to "to hold my horses" because I have no horses to hold. So good day.

~If there is any specific topic you would like me to write about, send me an e-mail at BriarBlack@hotmail.com~

Preteens: Are they human?

Looking at my home, you wouldn't think anything scary could possibly exist there. We live in a decent neighborhood, where absolutely nothing exciting ever happens, our home is clean, our yard is neat, and we even have roses growing beside the front door. You would never suspect that there was a monster secretly lurking behind that seemingly innocent front door. Unknown to you, however, there is preteen skulking withing, ready to strike at the first unsuspecting passerby!!

Okay, perhaps that was a tad bit melodramatic, but at times I have serious internal debates about whether or not aliens have abducted my real sister and replaced her with an evil clone. Well, maybe not serious internal debates about alien abductions. My sister, however, has gone through drastic personality changes in these past few months. I really don't know what happened to her. When I went back to college after Christmas break, she was the same sweet, err, semi-sweet girl I had known since childhood. After college let out for the summer and I came back, it was like a stranger was sharing a room with me. A temperamental, over-dramatic, conniving stranger. The scary part about this, is that she behaves as if nothing is different. She raises cain, has crying fits, and then walks around the rest of the day as if nothing happened. Maybe she thinks the whole family has short term memory loss and doesn't remember her craziness. I'm not quite sure.

Don't get me wrong, I love my sister very much, despite her insanity, and I know this is just a phase. So, I'm going to go all sentimental on this blog and say that I suppose I will just have to stick with her through all of this, and help the parents out the best I can. Since they are the ones really lost on how to handle her, but they are getting better at it. As the first child I was the guinea pig, so to speak, so with past experience they are taking her.....ummm......."difficulties" in stride.

As for the title question, "Preteens: Are they human?", the answer is a resounding NO, but eventually their humanity will eek back into their system and you can have a rational conversation with them again. Hopefully. If not, maybe my brother and I can sell her and get a cat. Everyone goes home happy.

~If you have a specif topic you would like me to write about send me an e-mail at BriarBlack@hotmail.com~

Freelancing and Dog Groomers

Freelancing sounds simple doesn't it? You go online, look up writer wanted ads on various websites, apply and start writing, right? Wrong. Maybe it is that way for experienced freelancers, but for mere beginners such as myself, it is a slow and painful uphill battle. I keep going from freelancer website to freelancer website, looking through all of the advertisements, and applying to any that might be willing to except an unexperienced freelance writer, no matter how hard or redundant the job is. That is the only to get your foot in the door from what I can tell. I just need one person to give me a shot and then I'm in. From that point on I can claim experience and my likelihood for being hired shoots way up. However, for now, I will just keep plugging along and eventually things will work out, and that is the advise I will give any beginning freelancer.

On a less frustrating and more amusing subject, I, the unsuspecting college student come home for summer break and find that my family has decided to buy a dog. I do not like dogs. I do not like dogs at all. I am firmly a feline person, and I want a pet dog about as much as I want a pet slug, but I had no say in the matter. So home I come, and am promptly greeted by this little black ball of matted hair that thinks licking me to death is the proper manner of greeting. Needless to say, I was not impressed. Very quickly I realized that the dog has two distinct hobbies: barking all night and chewing up everything he can find.

After two days I suggested selling the mutt (or dropping him off on the nearest corner) and adopting a cat. My suggestion was quickly shot down. Well, despite my obvious dislike for the yapping creature, it fell to me to take the family pet for his first grooming. So I walked him to the PetSmart right up the road, handed them the dog and asked them to get rid of all of the matts the canine had collected. It seems my family is incapable of brushing his fur. What I left at the groomers was a small black furball, that looked similar to a black teddy bear. What I got back from the groomers was a large black rat. They had shaved his hair down to the skin, and he was quite possibly the ugliest thing I had ever seen. I tried to leave it there, explaining to my mother that he was likely to scare our neighbors. She forced me to bring him home nonetheless. Now we have a destructive and barking rat running through our house. Lucky me.

~If you have any specific topic you would like me to write about e-mail it to me at: BriarBlack@hotmail.com~

My Writing Process

The writing part is easy, it's the sitting down and getting started part that's hard. I once told that to my English professor when she asked me about a particularly nasty writing assignment I had just turned in. You see, I am the type of writer that will try to do just about anything to keep from sitting down and actually writing. I'll be sitting at the keyboard, poised, ready to challenge my subject head-on, and suddenly I'll decide that it's time for dinner, or I have to go to the rest room. I mean, who could properly write with all of that commotion taking place right outside their window? Basically, if there is an excuse to keep from writing, I have used it. Probably multiple times.

That being said, I am hell bent and glory bound to have at least one new blog up every day. Hopefully more, but that will depend on how busy I am with other activities. Now, because of "my little problem" there is no telling when I will get the blog posted, or how long it will be. There is every possibility that I will post a three-sentence blog five minutes before twelve ranting about why I couldn't/didn't post earlier. Those will be a rare occurrences though. For the most part, I will have a two-to-three paragraph blog up, rambling about whatever subject comes to mind. So stay tuned, I'll be back soon with a new post that will probably much more interesting than this first introductory one. Talk to you then.

~If you have a particular subject you would like me to write about send me an e-mail at: BriarBlack@hotmail.com~