Pretends to be Dumb; the average geek

PSATs

Yes, I took PSATs today. And the reason I didn't update yesterday was because my Mom was making me study for them so... yea. I think I did alright with the PSATs so no worries there. Though I fail to find their importance because PSATs are just practice right? Whatever you do on them it doesn't matter I'd think, but I understand the importance of practicing, just not studying hard for the practice.

But whatever, other things happened today. My school introduced at the beginning of the year a positive reinforcement discipline system to move alongside demerits where people caught doing good deeds are rewarded with owls. At the end of a month, whatever grade earns the most owls gets a free mystery prize. Well, our class won, and we won Chinese food lunch. It was DELISCIOUS! But it also taught me something about my classmates. None of them could tell the difference between the following: Sesame Chicken, General Tsao's Chicken, and Orange Chicken.

Also, there were three different groups divided in the way that they pronounced "Tsao." Some say it is "chow" and others say "so" and personally, I say "tsow" With no consonant sound between the "t" and the "s."

Oh and angry ranty gimmick. Rants must be ranted.

I don't like how people are unwilling to try new things when they have nothing to lose for it.

In art class today, someone had the brilliance of bringing an iPod with an iTrip to play his music over a boombox that happened to be in the room. He went through the list of albums on iPod and at one point said "Demon Days." (Gorillaz new album) I then reflexively went, "I LOVE DEMON DAYS!" And then he said he only had one song on the album. this disapointed me so I started saying how they had all those other good songs and he mentioned their previous big hit, the song, "Clint Eastwood." He said he needed to buy that song from the iTunes music store.

I offered to burn both of the Gorillaz albums for him and he said no, "I only want that one song. I'll buy it."

The problem here is really in my opinion what the iTunes music store and radio music culture do to the way people buy and listen to music. The radio gets people to like specific songs and eventually through their being overplayed, gets people to hate those songs. However, thanks to P2P downloading and iTunes music store, there is no longer a reason to buy a whole album to get that one song. And in a lot of cases, this is beneficial because many one-hit-wonders release crappy albums.

But then so many other times, an album is quite strong and well-rounded with quality tracks justifying its purchase and in my experience, this has been the case with radio bands. But the problem here was that he was denying himself to listen to a whole album at no cost to him. He just wanted those two songs and didn't want the chance to discover something he loved like I had.

I remember fondly when I bought the Eiffel 65 CD just for the song Blue (Da Ba Dee) and then found out all but two songs on the album were just as good as Blue (Da Ba Dee) and that was special. But I don't think that kind of thing is happening to people anymore.

It might just be that I'm different. I like to go to yard sales and find CDs that are like $2 and buy a couple random ones I've never heard of hoping that one of the CDs I buy is good. (Sometimes I have incredible luck too, like when I got an album by Scott McCurry for only $1. Its awesome.) And I guess most people don't do that kind of thing.

But then I'm just unique and thats cool to me.

posted by the magnificent Cy "Brazanthr" Parker @ 2:58 AM

Bow down to my awesome-ness for I am nifty!