all those fairy tales that drugged us...

Last night some of my friends decided that a children's book called Where's the Beer (or something along those lines) would be a great idea. For some reason, on the train today, this inspired me to start thinking of fairy tale (okay, Disney, but it can always be expanded) Missed Connections. I highly doubt this is an original idea, but it was fun nevertheless. Here are just a few:

You: Short, with six of your friends (maybe brothers?).

Me: Pale, with lots of red lipstick, eating an apple and surrounded by birds.

You look like you need someone to keep your house clean. Maybe I can be that girl.

You: Waiting for a taxi, wearing perfect glass shoes.

Me: Tall, handsome, exuding charm.

You left a shoe behind. Want it back? Call me!

You: Very hairy, growling at anyone trying to stand near you.

Me: Reading a book, a bit stand-offish.

I'm looking for a man who's not afraid to show his wild side. Let me bring out the best in you!

You: Dark hair, drowning.

Me: Red hair, with a long girl tail.

I want to be part of your world!

Y2K

I had planned on talking about something completely different, but my dad sent me this video, and I felt the need to share it:

Decade in Review

My first thought when I saw it was "Oh wow, this stuff happened a lot more recently than I thought." My second thought was "Wait a second, nine years is a long time! That's almost half my life!" Both those statements seem completely and totally true to me, and therefore I can't even begin to comprehend the timeline of this video and how it fits into my life.

But personally, I just hope the world survives long enough for someone to make one of these for the next decade. 2010-2012 in review just doesn't have the same ring...

Hero vs. Villain?

I’m not ashamed to say I love Pete Doherty. If I were British, I would probably both love and hate him, as in 2008 he won Hero of the Year at the NME awards, and was also nominated for Villain of the Year. However, not all British drug addicted musicians are created equal. As much as I love Pete Doherty, I can’t stand Amy Winehouse. She may be more famous, spawning look-alikes across the country on October 31 two years ago, but there is nothing about her that interests me in the least.

To me, Amy Winehouse tends to come off as somewhat pathetic. Of course it’s always sad to see someone throwing their life away on drugs, but in the end I feel that she wants the high our attention more than the high from crack or whatever she’s doing now. Between her parents’ open pleas that she get clean and come home and her stumbling around London in her bra at 3 in the morning, Amy Winehouse seems to be everywhere, showing us just how much of a mess she really is. Can you name an Amy Winehouse song besides “Rehab?” Maybe I’m just not cool enough, but I certainly can’t name one. And yet, she’s equally famous for her drug use and her music.

Pete Doherty on the other hand, is famous for dating Kate Moss and doing drugs. Unless of course, you’ve actually heard his music. True, he doesn’t have the type of easily recognizable talent that Amy Winehouse displays in her voice. But that doesn’t mean he lacks talent. And when Perez Hilton claims that Pete Doherty coming out with a solo album “has D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R written all over it,” I think it’s pretty safe to say Perez has never listened to any of his music (or realized that spelling out words like that is incredibly annoying to anyone over 12). In the U.S. at least, the people who listen to Doherty’s music and the people who obsess about him doing drugs seem to be separate audiences. Because unlike with Amy Winehouse, you can separate the two, and that’s why he made both the Hero and Villain lists.

Maybe it’s because he supposedly has a 7pm court-ordered curfew, but you don’t see Pete Doherty falling out of clubs all over the world. We know he’s a junkie, and probably far worse off than Amy Winehouse (especially since she has yet to be arrested for shooting up in an airplane bathroom!), but unlike her, he actually has managed to play a few shows this year. Amy may not like shirts or carefully applied makeup, but with his fedoras and ties, I’m fully convinced Pete would look like a somewhat normal human being if he showered once in a while and got some concealer for those circles under his eyes.

But most importantly, Pete Doherty seems to have a both a sense of humor and some self-awareness. Sure, we know Amy Winehouse doesn’t want to go to rehab, but it takes a real man to admit that you managed to break through your drug haze and cry about a breakup (Admittedly a breakup with one of the world’s top models, but still. He cried. A lot, as far as I can tell). In an interview, Pete Doherty said that “there’s no drug in the world that can compare with playing music,” and perhaps I’m naive, but I think he means it. He’s a musician that happens to be a heroin addict. Unfortunately, Amy Winehouse seems to have that backwards right now, and that is why Pete Doherty is my favorite British musician/junkie.

Persona Non Grata

Over the summer, after seeing Julie and Julia, I was inspired to start a blog, as I'm sure many people who saw the movie were. Especially since nowadays a blog is apparently a surefire way to a book and movie deal. Well, that blog died after one entry, which clearly will not get publishers knocking down my door, so I decided to try again.

Truthfully, this is my third attempt at a blog. The first was the work of an angsty 9th grader, who blogged way too much about her friends and tried to be cool and mysterious. Needless to say, it's not something I want to look at ever again.

But I am a person made to blog. I love blogs. I refuse to tell you how many I read on a semi-regular basis, but I'm sure you can tell it's a lot, just from that statement. I'm an intensely curious person, and I love that you can find out so much about anything and anyone from a blog. Plus, I already think in blog entries. Seriously, I think almost entirely in grammatically correct, full paragraphs, which probably doesn't come as a huge shock to anyone who knows me (nor will the fact that most of my blog entries will probably be annoying long). And ever since I started reading Chuck Klosterman in high school and realized how much I agree with him, I'm convinced that anyone can talk wittily and meaningfully about pop culture. I have things to say, damnit, and I'm just arrogant enough to think people will read this. Because people will read anything that's on the internet, right?

Which brings me to the real reason I'm here. Apparently, I am not on the internet. The MIT Museum has a website called Personas which is supposed to show you "how the internet sees you." Basically you put in your name (or someone else's name), the website searches for mentions of that name on the internet, and breaks all those mentions down into categories like "education," "news," and "religious" to create the persona. When I put in my name, however, they claimed there were "no digital traces" of me, or anyone else with my name. Thinking it may be a glitch in the system, I tried everyone in my family, and all of them had digital personas, even my mom, who barely knows how to use a computer. So I tried again. Still nothing.

This is clearly false. When you Google me, you get pages and pages of people with my name, some of which are me and many of which are not. We all exist on the internet. But Personas claims I don't, and everyone knows you're not a real person nowadays if you're not on the internet. And so here I am, on the internet. Let's just hope this persona works for me...