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~