Et Tu, Technology?

Technology is always trying to thwart me. 

Granted, I am the exact type of person technology can easily prey upon.   

I have a history of hating two things, and they tend to go hand-in-hand. The first one is technology… and the second one is change.

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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I’m the person that takes 6 months to even open the box containing the MP3 player she received for her birthday.... the person that needed a friend to show her how to put songs from iTunes onto her iPod (oh my God… automatic versus manual syncing of songs is a concept that should not have taken me as long as it did)... the person who freaks out that she’s going to get a virus if she must download files or if the wrong button is pressed on her computer. 

It took me a year or more to realize that my digital camera had video recording capability (and yes, I merely stumbled upon the fact one day. Such a fun serendipitous find… like discovering you randomly have $10 in your back jeans pocket).

I’ve owned a telescope for years that I got a couple Christmases ago, and I have literally never looked through it to observe a single star in the night sky. What’s holding me back? The instructional DVD explaining how it works.

In general, the instructional manuals are my stumbling blocks… my kryptonite, you might say. I just see the little booklet and before I can even attempt to read it, a little part of me dies inside.

It doesn’t help that I’m usually still quite attached to the object that I had to get rid of in order to replace it with the new fangled device that now requires me to read a volume of material just to understand how to turn it on.  I am a great fan of the familiar.

My old mobile phone might be crap, but it’s my crap, and I know how it works and how to coax and cajole it so it does my bidding...eventually. The new cell phone looks foreign and unfriendly, and I have a feeling it is less than thrilled to be my guinea pig.     

Pictured: my new iPhone

However, I must gather together all of my courage because there are two technological devices I must purchase soon because they desperately need to be updated and/or replaced:  my mobile phone and my lap top.

(When your mobile phone constantly freezes up like a Windows 98 desktop computer and your lap top keeps overheating and shutting itself down multiple times in a day, I hear it’s a sign from the technology gods that their time on this earth has come full circle. Thanks, planned obsolescence. You’re a peach.)

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Pictured: planned obsolescence

You would think I would learn my lesson and just accept these inevitable shifts in the technological structure of the modern world… especially since I usually join the dark side eventually… only, of course, after a ridiculous amount of huffy resistance as well as an unhealthy dose of both inward and audible groaning.

Three examples of things that I foolishly considered mere “fads” that I was initially dead set against are as follows:

·         Facebook

It took me a couple years to finally join after much coercion from family/friends. I refused to join something when the only good reason people kept giving me to do so was “everyone else has one.”

I was also convinced it would somehow steal my identity and/or lead to my eventual death by ninja assassins. I’m happy to report that it would now take the threat from a ninja assassin to convince me to deactivate said account.

·         Texting

I could never understand why people would want to spend the time to painstakingly type out a detailed message to a person when they could simply press a button and call and/or leave a voice mail.

The only consistent answer I received from avid pro-texters for the reason they liked texting was: “sometimes you really just don’t want to talk to someone.” Receiving this response repeatedly led me to believe for an extended period of time that all “texters” were anti-social creeps who held an aversion for human voices and the voices of their own supposed “friends” in particular.

I now understand the convenience of being able to leave a quick message to someone when I am perhaps trapped in an environment where I cannot call… such as school or an appointment, etc. I would now probably need full-time therapy if someone told me I could no longer have texting on my phone.

·         iPods

I think the reason I held out so long on joining the ipod craze – other than my insane need to be able to physically touch objects that I pay good money for… and thus my long time love affair with the more tangible CDs – was that I did not fully understand them. (Okay, who are we really kidding, I still don’t.)

When faced with a concept that is too confusing for my brain to process, it merely shuts down. 

Kind of like my lap top.

Also, there was simply this rebellious part inside of me that refused to buy something simply because other people were buying it (or buy into a trend, see the above Facebook example).

It’s the same reason I refused to watch Avatar. Too much hype. Everyone said it was just soooo awesome…and maybe it is good, but 1) I doubt it will be great... how can it be now that you have jinxed it by building it up too much, 2) I'm so tired of hearing about it that I'm already sick of it, and 3) if I see the stupid trailer one more time I might snap.  Also it is highly entertaining how much it annoys other people who loved the film when you tell them that you refuse to watch it based on principal. So, you know, bonus.      

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Regardless, it looks like I might finally be forced to drink the techno Kool-Aid..... le sigh.

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“The Story Can Resume”: “No rhymes, no embellishments, no adjectives…”

Well, I’ve critiqued movies and music, so naturally one would suppose I would critique books next, but let’s save that for my May post possibly, shall we?

This isn’t really the same kind of blog as the other ones have been – it’s more of a side note – so instead of calling it the third one of the series, let’s just consider it blog number two and a half, or something like that.

Essentially, this is what is presently on my mind:

I just finished watching the movie Atonement (yes, I know it came out several years ago, and no, I didn’t read the book first) and I’ll admit that even though I tend to enjoy a sappy, romantic comedy over a sad, romantic drama… and although I was several shades of depressed after the movie was over, I did get that strange, cathartic feeling that sometimes makes the whole experience worthwhile. 

*Warning: Spoiler*

As someone who enjoys writing, I believe it was the writing aspect of this film that truly appealed to me. And oddly enough, it wasn’t really until the very ending scenes – hearing some of the last words that Briony spoke, in fact – that I was truly moved by the story as a whole.  There was just something so hauntingly beautiful about the ending… about Briony attempting to atone for her sins in reality by solving them in the literary world… something so poetic and pathetic (in the pathos sense of the word) about having two people (two star-crossed lovers, no less) be dead yet still have their love and their story live on. They had been frozen in time and space… now only existing in the literary realm… immortalized there for all eternity.    

It’s such a poignant illustration of the power of the author… the power to change the course of history for her characters… to decide their fates… yet it is still up to the readers from that moment forward to keep them alive after the final word has been written.

It was such a strange unfolding to have her deliberately alter the destiny of two “real” people in order to give them the proper ending they never received but should have been granted… to give them not only the ending they were denied and would have wanted for themselves but also the ending that her readers (and likewise, the film’s audience) ultimately desired and/or expected.    

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“So my sister and Robbie never had the time together they both so longed for and deserved, which, ever since, I’ve... always felt I prevented. But what sense of hope or satisfaction could a reader derive from an ending like that? So, in the book, I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out on in life. I’d like to think this wasn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness. I gave them their happiness.” ~Atonement, 2007

April Fool: The first was a Friday… Coincidence?

So last time I critiqued several films I’d watched in theaters. Mainly because several of these films did not measure up to my level of expectation, and when I’m disappointed, I'm inclined to rant.

Well, folks, I’m back, and I’m here to criticize a different entertainment medium:  the music industry.  Particularly, the lyrics of so called “music” nowadays.  If the screenplays and dialogue of some recent movies have been lackluster (and the performances as well, but moving on), it is nothing compared to the sorry state that lyrics have been reduced to in today’s songs.

I’m pretty sure you know the specific song that brought this entire subject to my mind. It’s been recently mocked and parodied by everyone over the last few weeks.  If you haven’t heard it yet, I apologize in advance, because once you listen to it, you can never “unhear” it:

That’s right. It’s Rebecca Black’s tribute to banality:  the monstrosity aptly titled Friday.

It’s a song where in the bridge the lyricist found it necessary to list the order of certain days of the week.  And unless one’s target audience is composed of people from a planet other than earth, this is rather excessive and, frankly, insulting to a person’s intelligence.

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday

Today is Friday, Friday

…

Tomorrow is Saturday

And Sunday comes afterwards

The number of bash-worthy elements in this music video is endless (vocals come immediately to mind, but I digress).

Another trend in the music of today’s pop culture is to make other pop culture references.  This is nothing new and it has been done ad nauseam. 

Take for example the movie Inception.  Yes, I loved that movie and it was awesome (don’t judge me), but why must all these songs be singing about it suddenly?

Jennifer Lopez – On the Floor

I’m loose
And everybody knows I get off the train
Baby it’s the truth
I’m like inception I play with your brain

Black Eyed Peas – Just Can’t Get Enough

Honey got a sexy all steamin’

She givin’ hotness a new meanin’

Perfection mama you gleamin’

Inception you got a brother dreamin’, dreamin’

Another thing these songs love to mention is new technology.  However, in a few years from now, listening to a song that references checking your facebook or listening to your iPod is going to be as dated as listening to a song that discusses a VHS tape or a record player, etc.

Iyaz – Replay

It’s like my iPod’s stuck on replay

(Newsflash: It’s a “repeat” button not a “replay” button.)

Black Eyed Peas – Imma Be

Imma, Imma, Imma be rockin’ their iPod to the infinite

Also, because originality and creativity are no longer things artists strive for anymore in their songs, many popular hooks and choruses are simply a remix of older ones.

No Love – Eminem (feat. Lil Wayne)

Remind you of anything? Maybe Haddaway’s What Is Love?

Black Eyed Peas – The Time (Dirty Bit)

Remind you of anything? Maybe (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack?

will.i.am and Nicki Minaj – Check It Out

Remind you of anything? Maybe Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star?

(And yes, as sad as it is, I was convinced that the backup singers’ “ooh, ooh” originated from the will.i.am and Nicki Minaj version. My boyfriend had to convince me that they actually “borrowed” it from a preexisting song.) 

He also dislikes the Eric Prydz song Call On Me…

Because it’s just a rip off of Steve Winwood’s Valerie.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I may be bashing some of these songs that I’ve used as examples, but I’m willing to admit that I have fun listening to some of them despite the fact that they may not be as good as the Beatles, Michael Jackson, or whatever “fill-in-the-blank-artist-or-group-stands-as-the-paradigm-of-musical-genius-in-your-book,” etc.

Even my boyfriend rolls his eyes every time I jam to Katy Perry’s new song E.T. because he thinks the lyrics are just God awful. And yes, her songs are not necessarily masterpieces when it comes to the lyrical department. And yes, the song is crammed to the max with space-related lingo to the point that it reaches the ridiculous.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I have fun jamming to Katy Perry...

 Boy, you're an alien
Your touch so foreign
It's supernatural
Extraterrestrial

In other words, maybe I should just stop criticizing music because everyone enjoys different styles and even I like lame stuff sometimes, right?

Nah.