The Lonely Position of Neutral

Beautiful weather lately. 50+ degrees by noon... I'm loving this. I wish it could stay like this forever...

I had a chance to wash my car and vacuum it out, I miss it, I REALLY wish I had a garage so I could fix it... I need my car. MY car.

In other news, Travis and Stu helped me load my Delta 88 (derby car) up on Travis' trailer and haul it to Marnies house. She said I could keep it there for a while.

So my boss came up to me today and asked me if I knew of anyone who needed a job. We're short handed and he's decided to hire some help. I called up Dave, and it turns out that he's in need of a steady job. He's in for an interview on Thursday. It'll be cool if they hire him (which I'm sure they will) but weird at the same time. Dave and I used to be best friends, and now its almost like we're complete strangers. It's VERY weird.

-----------

Sometimes I wonder why some people are such sheep. It's like they're a small child attracted to the shiniest object they see... but they just haven't grown out of it. It annoys the HELL out of me when someone likes something simply because its pop culture. Few examples... Spinner "rimz" (actually, they're called WHEELS, rims are the very outer ring ONLY, the whole thing together is called a wheel), are simply hideous. They just don't look good, at all. They are gaudy and tacky... But because they are the new thing, and all the rich people have them, people view them as being a cool thing.

Putting 22 inch wheels on a car COMPELTELY ruins the performance of the car. It gets worse gas mileage and handles like crap. Not to mention, it looks like SHIT. But people do it because it gets them attention.

Lots of bass in a stereo system is nice, but ONLY when its balanced with treble and mid range. When your car is rattling apart, and you can't even hear the cymbals or vocals, that's when a "system" becomes ridiculous and pointless. Tons of bass is just to show off the fact that you have something about your car that is different. But a fine tuned stereo system is for those who actually CARE about their music.

I'm tired of people going "ooooooh, shiny!!!! I LIKE! I LIKE! ME WANT"... when they really don't. They only SAY it because its popular. A car full of guys smoking weed on a TV screen... no, that's not awesome, that's stupid, smoking weed is stupid. Watch a TV show, if there's a scene when someone downs a glass of beer, the WHOLE AUDIENCE will cheer. "WOW!!! YOU CAN CONSUME LIQUID AT A HIGH RATE!!!" No one would cheer if I drank an entire glass of Cola really fast...

Brotherhood. Alcohol, drugs, "rimz", systems... they unite people.

There's nothing wrong with a unification of the people, but it is frikkin ANNOYING when people act like blind sheep just following the herd.

Be an individual, damnit!!!

Start understanding what MUSIC is and forget the showmanship of it. Face it, bands that scream and have "emotional" music, are EMO. EMO is a VERY generic genre of music. Basically, its a case where someone goes "Hey I want to have a band too, so I'll follow this formula!"

I hate The Used. I hate The Bronx. I hate The Bled. I hate Atreyu, or any other band that has that stupid belching scream that has absolutely NO musical value in it whatsoever. There are certain things that make music MUSIC, and these bands defy ALL of the rules. Thrashing stuff together isn't MUSIC. Their songs have no structure. It was once argued to me that the screaming doesn't suck, its just their style... well, in that case, I could tap on my computer desk here out of rythym and call it "my style".

The Used is not punk rock. It's not even rock. Not even CLOSE.

Rock = ZZ Top, Van Halen, Led Zepplin etc... You want a good rock song? Check out Sharp Dressed Man by ZZ Top or Hot For Teacher by Van Halen. Those songs ROCK.

Metal = Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Megadeth...

Pop = NSync, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys...

Emo = Dashboard Confessionals, The Used, Atreyu, The Bled...

For someone to equate a band like The Used to bands like ZZ Top or Van Halen or Metallica is a COMPLETE insult to rock/metal. I could write a song like ANY of "The Used" easily. But to think up something like "Sharp Dressed Man", or the INSANE texture of drums and guitar in "Hot For Teacher", or the philisophical meanings behind songs like "One" and "Disposable Heroes"... That's lost today. Nobody goes deep into their music anymore.

I'm sick of it.

I have a friend who will hate me for bad mouthing "The Used"... But other than stating that I hate the band, which is my OPINION which I am entirely entitled to, everything else I've said is technically true.

"emo (short for emo-core, itself a contraction of "emotional hardcore", now usually an abbreviation of "emotional") is a term now broadly used to describe almost any form of guitar-driven alternative rock that expresses emotions beyond traditional punk's limited emotional palette of alienation and rage. It is also used to describe fans of this genre, most commonly teenagers. (e.g., "emo kid"). The actual term "emo" originated in the mid-1980s D.C. hardcore punk scene, with the band Rites of Spring. The term addressed both the way the band connected with its audience, as well as its tendency to deal more with topics of personal and relationship politics than with the standard themes of punk and hardcore music."