Missing:

Direction:

The direction that the class needs to take is gaining a sense of confidence. There have been snide and outward comments about Peter and I taking a dominate role in the discussions. I will speak on behalf of myself alone when I say that these comments are unwarranted and not constructive in any way. They are actually diminishing and counter productive. In life if you do not speak you will not be heard. There will always be loud voices drowning your voice out. What needs to happen is that instead of retracting and stewing in irritation, speak up. Every person's voice deserves to be heard. My actions may not seem to display this belief, but I do believe in it, passionately. I consider everyone in class an equal, and so I treat everyone like an equal, with the enthusiasm and confidence of one who enjoys discussing ideas. Ideas do not move forward in restrictive structure, and yes the current school wide classroom system is restrictive to ideas and students. In class there have been instances where people have become passionate and not allowed "domination" of their ideas; these discussions have been some of the best the class has had. If the class gained a sense of confidence, the passion with which many ideas brew in my fellow students heads could be thrown out into the ring and be chewed over. I, personally, think and listen best when under a heated and loud discussion. It may not seem like I take anything from it, but after class the words sink in. This quiet mean girls thing is just not kicking it for me.

xoxo
Gossip Gurl

Thankful

I am thankful for my classmate Peter Casey for the reasons discussed in the essay above. His confidence in expressing his ideas is refreshing in a school which prides itself on academic excellence but contains classrooms where expressing ideas seems to be unwarranted. While our philosophy class and a few other outliers in the school have been open to discussions, I am delighted to see another student who has not been suppressed  by the education system. He has brought up many concepts and ideas which I have learned from. Many of our class's discussions, in which he was involved (most of them), his ideas and rebuttles to my concepts have lead me to further thinking about the very concepts I put fourth. He has lead me to think more, and strive to better explanation of myself, both of which are fundamental in the subject of philosophy. So thank you, P.C.
I don't like macs anyways.

xoxo

/\//\/DOPETHRONE/\//\/\//\/\/\//\/\/\/\////\/\/\/\\\/\///\/\

Dopethrone will blow your mind.
Dopethrone will make you deaf.
Dopethrone will make you want to destroy.
Dopethrone is genius.

With every guitar and bass down-tuned, the sound of Dopethrone is hate. In 2000, when Dopethrone came out, Electric Wizard was able to embody everything that is Metal music; heaviness, destruction, anger, hate, etc. This is because on Dopethrone Electric Wizard is honest. They put up no facades. Not once do they seem like what much of metal music seems to be; suburban boys who decided to dress up like death and make their mommies angry.

Dopethrone is not like other metal albums because more than any other band they have taken an important idea from metal gods, Black Sabbath; melody is important. Much of metal forsakes melody, for speed, overdrive, and satanic riffs, but the end result is faux-satanic garbage. These band's music does not seem evil, but rather like a sad joke. Electric Wizard on the other hand utilizes the guitar and bass as melody makers. Creating both memorable riffs/lead guitar and mind blowing heaviness.

The weight of the songs on Dopethrone is unbelievably strong; the slow and unrelenting pounding of almost tribal drums, the bass throbbing in it's moaning and cyclical chants, and the guitars screaming when in the lead but always coming back to be part of the team, chanting and destroying as the tidal wave of sounds rip your ears apart. But the vocals are the last touch that put Electric Wizard above every other doom band. They do not scream in your ear, feign unnecessary hatred, but rather come beautifully paired with the music behind them. They are the highest pitch, when the band is blasting full out, singing with almost a cult leader type affirmation, the vocals create juxtaposition and unity in the music. Sometimes the vocals mix with the lead guitar in matched pitch,  creating a religious ferver, that accompanies the words. Great music is religious, creating feelings of accompaniment and gratefulness for the moment, both of which, besides the hateful sentiment the album holds, Dopethrone gives.  It asks you to relive, remember, and imagine; pain and hate, war and carnage, death and destruction. That's why it's brilliant. The power with which it is able to make you feel these issues is why it is great, and will forever be great. Because while anyone can make a song that makes you feel good, all great albums hand you a new lens to see the world in, even if it's just for that 45 minutes. Whether that lens gives you green fields or darkness, you are seeing differently. When you listen to Dopethrone you're not just listening to heavy music, the world outside is actually getting dimmer.

U KAN TRRNT FLS ONLNE.
(I'm not getting taken down by the fedz.)

XoXo

Alone,

I am in my most pleasant state when my hands are at work in a room alone. The goals of physical work so short sighted and so easy to fulfill, your mind has no where else to go but into higher thought. I think and laugh and enjoy the life which I live. I look at myself in the the mirror and find myself appealing, a body which has accomplishment on his face, dirt on his hands. The movement of painting or sanding or scrubbing, is the same as saying om for me, a respite from the trivialities that cause so much grief and mental energy. I would be more than happy to work; building new and cleaning old.
---my life dream---

I have seen the great mountains of the west,
understood the beauty of the shore,
felt alone but one of this earth in the never ending fields of corn,
I have spent time in bars where there are legacies as old as the stools,
reading what there is to read, but never having read it all.
I want home,

I am a midwest boy.

I meet with love and she moves in,
only us too,
her and I,
we fall asleep to a fire,
I can work, in the backyard,
and she has too many thoughts of her own to care,
and we fall asleep to a fire,
and I die, after her, to feel death before I go,
and to leave, with whatever left behind meaning as little as when I started.

XoXo
Gossip Girl

I have given up hope for the future of my art career, and not for lack of desire, but lack of desire to interact. The more and more I am becoming involved in art outside of my high school community the more I am noticing it is less about art and more about socializing. I have heard the phrase "It's not what you know, but who you know." And while it's easy to say "yeah that's true.", coming to understand the real truth in that statement is a real defeating moment. How can one continue to create something, meant to be shared with others, if the only avenue to release it in the public is through kissing the asses of every person who enters the party with their mixed race girlfriend?

In this complete cultural catastrophe, the artist, the person who finds absolute pleasure in creating work, work which moves them so much that they hope to share it with others, has been degraded. Sadly the artist has become a cultural identity. An identity that many associate with that dark stanky word "Hipster". Why have we come to see the artist as the poloroid picture taking, asshole that talks with a peculiar enunciation of words to make them sound more educated. That name dropping, information saturated babbling idiot. With every fling of the hair and mention of a band that no one but a couple of rotting logs in the forest of life have heard of, there grows a divide between true art and lies.
I do not know whether this cultural phenomena has existed before. Of course I know pretentious people have existed for ever and a day, but has internet and the blog world given too much opportunity for the uncreative and pseudo intellectual to become an "artist"? I fear it's given them to much power, no longer do they to have to put in effort to become the hip, but just turn on the computer screen and away they go.
It would be fine if they lived on their own, but they are everywhere. Vampires who suck  your soul and creativity out with their inability to have enthusiasm for anything but the arcane. The true artist cannot break these moving confines and so he has two options; join, or quit the game. Joining means turning oneself off  to the true desires and hoping that he/she reaches people of the same interest. Quitting the game means doing it for yourself, but you've lost hope of sharing it with people, perhaps one of the important parts of art.
This great divide grows stronger as the counter-culture has been homogenized into a marketable quantity. The audience and the wanna-be artists have grown accustom to taking the ideals and aesthetics of blogs and websites like Pitchfork media, and bring them with them into the art world. True, in any case of a growing culture, good or bad, there exists a counter culture, but where do you find it when these Pitchfork babies are leeching on to everything that is interesting, bringing their faux and self-righteous attitudes?
I find myself outside of a DIY (do it yourself) show, and while the bands that just played were great, the noise that is made in the PBR and cigarette stained yard of the humbolt park house is getting to me. Eyes everywhere, these people are like vultures looking for things to give a dirty look at. Why? Why at twenty five, thrity, have they not grown out of the petty high school attitudes. Why can I not come to a show and not feel attacked because I am not as old as them, because I decided to dress with what I think is cool, something that does not fit into the blogosphere. I would think that in this case, everyone of them being artists, for sure, that there would be some acceptance, reaching out, to a new comer. But sadly humans are dismal creatrues who like to stay in the cave for as long as they can. So sure, why even go to these shows if everyone's an asshole and you feel like shit?
Because, and this is the problem, they are the only way to see these bands. For people like me who have real interest in seeing new bands and experiencing live music by the occasional band who is trying to make real art, the only place to go is the basement of some blog loving lady's house.
So there's the conundrum, do I give up, or do I ignore the stares and the petty words, to see the art. Well I have enough conjones to go to these things and ignore those culturally relevant vultures, but what about when I want to make art.
I have a band.
We want to play shows.
But we're teenagers, and we don't wear cool leather jackets and listen to punk cassettes.
Where do we go?
One can only hope that the defeatist minds of these washed out people can open up for a brief second and give us the opportunity. Do they judge? Of course, but the hope is that there is someone there like me who came to see a new band and will leave and tell his friends about us. And so I guess there is hope, hope that there are more people in the same circumstances as me. Maybe one day we'll meet. Maybe one day we'll create things that are new and we'll share them without the culture vultures sucking the life out of it. Maybe one day we'll start a revolution. If there is a god, I'm pleading to you to make this happen, because life ain't no good where it's at bro.
xoxo

Voltaire and Camus would vote for....

Voltaire:
Voltaire was a religious man, but also man who believed in man's freedom of choice. That's why he was buried half inside a church half outside. He was a man who believed in the good of the world. Do either of our main candidates have these qualities? They put on that they do, but that's a necessary act for a man who is supposed to lead a nation. No one likes a pessimist or even a rational man, people like men who inspire.
Voltaire would be stuck in the conundrum that most people are, choosing the better of two men, because neithercandidate are able to inspire, to move, or to lead. He would be glad as most of us are, probably more so because of his country's monarchical/oligarichial rule, that he was able to choose at all. Still though he would be drawn into the problem of knowing the only vote that would matter was a one for either of the two major parties. The third party has little, if no effectiveness and Voltaire wants change, or at least to be part of decisions for the betterment of humanity.

Mitt Romney would be his vote. Mr.Romney embodies Voltaire's religious ties and is for a more of a conservative, which would be agreeable with Voltaire who would repel strong goverment, because of the stronghold his government had on him and his fellow men. Sure he would disagree with many of Mr. Romney's points, but again he would be choosing the better of two men.

Camus:

In many of the other blogs students argue that Camus would not vote at all but looking at his personal history he was involved in politics. Revolution is what he wanted, revolution from the strongholds and destructive goverments that existed in his turbulant age. He was an editor of a French Revolutionary magazine, which means that he was not indifferent but saw rather that change was necessary and it was up to the individual, himself, to make that change, basically existentialsim. Not, what many others mistake as not caring or seeing the point. 

Even if he took an abusurdist stance, he would still vote. He would acknowledge the rediculousness of the political system, but he would understand that there may be meaning in it, well atleast in participation. Camus would appreciate that he as a citizen of a nation had a say in what the future of the nation would be, however puiny or unheard that say was. I am not clear on what his political convictions were, but I want to emphasize the point that he would vote, or atleast put in a blank ballot.

XoXo

Something Meaningful In Your <3 <3 <3 Life

Zach Galifianakis Live @ the purple onion embodies everything I believe is funny, good performance  and good art. Comedy is universally considered one of the lowest forms of entertainment, but why? Because people like Ron White exist. Jokes that play on nothing and vulgarity are stand up comedy. From the first minute Zach Galifianakis steps on stage, minutes late because he didn't know when the show started, it is him against the audience. He isn't trying to humor them, but rather himself. His word play, self-righteousness, and nonconformity within the structure of a stand up routine, make a most entertaining performance  I was talking to a gurl who said after five minutes of it she turned it off because it was so hard to watch. I was shocked because I hadn't even noticed that his performance could make someone uncomfortable. It also might have been that every time I watch it, I've had my hands on my face crying with laughter. Galifianakis gives artfulness to comedy and can make any day for me a good one. Thank you my bearded friend, I'm sorry the hangover destroyed your life (which in fact is true, from the few interviews he had been forced to give).

XoXo
Matt

"If you love Barry Manilow, you're gonna love the Insane Clown Posse. Love them. They're exactly... well, they're not exactly alike, but they're a little bit alike." 

CANDIDE, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

The punishment never fits the crime. The umbrella like punishments we have established for dealing with the "criminal" have never done justice to the victim or the criminal (victim of the system). The overwhelming similarity  to me at least, between Candide and the modern world is that Candide is being punished by a world in which all he did was exist. He did not create or even choose to take part, but suddenly like birth, is placed with no training or prior knowledge to guide him. The world then takes advantage of him and begins to ravage and rip him apart piece by piece. Punishment for existing it seems, but it's the best of all possible worlds!
---I had been sitting in the greenery on Jackson and State when I was approached by a homeless woman who asked me "did I believe in god?" I said no, I wasn't opposed to god, but it didn't have much relevance in my life. Words frothed from her chapped gums as she screamed at me "Who do you think made all this!" "God has a plan for all of us, God is good, God is great, I would be nothing without god." How fucking depressing. She was indeed Candide. She knew no better than just to put faith in god. Her existence was far from good, she was missing all but seven teeth, but the world was good because she knew god was up there looking down. The indifference of the world was crushing her every second that she lived. The system created so that the majority could at least be fed and housed was up in a tower shooting down any potential she had. She was being punished by the world like Candide. Did she deserve this punishment, I don't think so. Who deserves to have all but seven of their teeth lost. Who deserves to wear a pink shirt so soiled by dried dirt and spit that you would mistake it for grey? Who deserves to have eyes the murky mix of yellow and red from their last drug intake. The world punishes, who? The unluckies, the Candides. Candide was kicked out of the castle, flung into the real world because he tried to kiss a girl. Put into the ocean without a lifeboat because he tried to live life, his crime doesn't fit the punishment, nor do most people's for that matter. It's the fact that life sucks and then you die, for those unlucky people who get the wrong end of the stick. The person who kisses the girl right as the king passes.

XoXo