A Rant About Rants

I haven't fully exercised this part of my brain/ personality in a while. So I apologize if I am rusty.

Back in the day, I used to hold daily rants during the lunch hour at school. To be honest,  I don't know why so many people listened to me because I was raving lunatic. I really think it went to my head sometimes too. I knew I could rant about pretty much anything and my friends would be my willing/unwilling audience. Let me be clear, these rants were definitely for entertainment value. I find this is the only way I can express my opinion: mostly insincerely.

I had quite the range of topics I would talk about, and to this day I don't know what I said 95% of the time. You tell me.

The variety was impressive, from what I can recall.

I had the inspirational: "Band people think they are better than us Orchestra people, but really we're all losers TOGETHER",

The dramatic: "The Miss Teen Pageant had a suspicious letter addressed to my HOMEROOM and I will be running some tests on the envelope for poisonous substances tonight",

The crazy fanatic: "Orcas are deceitful and they are planning a secret take over of the world",

The more conspiracy-fueled: "I think I have a secret relative who was a nazi and here is my totally not made up evidence",

and the reoccurring themed "Let's explore the inner psyche of my mind and see how really crazy this conversation gets!".

As I grew older, I used this blog to rant about random things. I still had lunchroom rants at college though, most of them themed either "Maybe everyone rolls their eyes at Environmental Studies majors because sometimes we act like pretentious jerks" or "Can't everyone just realize we are all losers TOGETHER??!!"

Those were the days. When ranting about stuff wasn't the THING to do. Now everybody is ranting, and not in the funny, slightly insincere way that I like to do that makes people laugh AND think ( I think, again, inflated ego). Everyone has an opinion and a tirade to go on, and we are all super f**king serious, bro. And so, slowly, I stopped voicing my opinions in an entertaining light. Because there are many, many opinions to wade through. And my rants are probably offensive to humans because I exploit their terrible behaviors to make others laugh. Am I'm tasteless and don't remember what I'm saying when I'm in a rant state of mind.

If my high school self were to know that I stopped ranting about dumb stuff that doesn't matter on a daily basis, she would have become possessed with a dark entity and spewed forth a rant so meta and terrible, that she would have DIED.

But no, the ranting market is way over-saturated. Everybody's doing it, and it's no longer fun. It's made me feel hollow and meaningless on my quest to provide some sort of odd joy in this world.

To be fair, there's a hefty amount of serious shit hitting the fan these days, and kudos to people who are trying to make this world a better place by having their super serious rants about the state of the union. You do you.  But that just ain't my style. Never was, never will be. I. physically. can't. be. serious. about. opinions.

And so, I am slowly making my return to the world of rant. Because the market for utterly insane incoherent ranting isn't over-saturated y- ....oh wait. um. NEVER MIND. THAT SEEMS TO BE COVERED. And all you super serious coherent meaningful rant people have the rest.

So that leaves entertaining rants, which I think is pretty much all of youtube now so...

Whatever man. I'll get my groove back.

Songs you didn't know I liked PART 2

I've been gone a long time. I'm going to ease back into writing with a little list. You can read the first iteration of this post here.

Get Back- Ludacris: I don't know what it is about this song that I like other than I like to shout "GET BACK MOTHERF****R YOU DON'T KNOW ME LIKE THAT at people.

Capital G- Nine Inch Nails: Now I love Nine Inch Nails in general. NIN saved me in college. But why this song? There are loads more better than this. There's just something fun about reciting the opening lyrics to unsuspecting people out of context and sounding really philosophical. (I'm sensing a theme).

The Beautiful People- Marilyn Manson: Tyler likes to point out that literally no one would suspect I listen to ANY song by Marilyn Mason. I would agree, this one is pretty left field for me. But damn, this is a great song to angry air guitar to.

Fairytale- Alexander Rybak: Here is one that I'm really embarrassed about. This is some sappy EuroVision shit that I can't get enough of. It's like an alcohol-free Applebee's specialty drink drinking song.

Womanizer-Britney Spears: What I would give to actually be good at dancing. This song always gets me thinking I'm a Pop Star when, if I were to video record myself lip-syncing and dancing to this song, which I certainly have not, I would be disappointed in the unflattering footage of myself.

'93 Me and Fred and Dave and Ted- The Magnetic Fields: The singer in this band always sounds like he's just depressed as shit and that his own voice is boring the hell out of himself. But I learned all of the lyrics to this song in 2 hours upon hearing it.

From the Pinnacle to the Pit- Ghost B.C.: Even though King Diamond scared the crap out of me, I find the characters that make up Ghost B.C. delightfully and charmingly frightful. Despite the fact the band is made up of nameless ghouls and a satanic priest, they aren't actually satanists. But sure, this is my Hail Satan jam.

Bodies-Drowning Pool: I love this song because all I can imagine is my brother rollerblading to this song in gym class.

Here We Go-Bassnectar: I think the house/dub/whatever genre has some real potential to sound cool. Unfortunately it's usually quite repetitive, uses small child voice samples a little too often, and is quite unimaginative. However, I can respect the really nice bass-drop in this song.

Copabana- Barry Manilow: I could be dying of some terrible illness and I bet I'll still dance to the entirety of this song if played. Please keep playing this at wedding receptions. Thanks.

Young and Directionless

What do I even write? Where do I even write?

Since I killed this blog, I started a couple of "spin-off" blogs that I thought would host my "real" writing. I thought this blog was too...fake? I'm not even sure. My feelings were very real here. My voice is very clear in all of these posts. I must have been embarrassed by the content. I seemed too young and directionless. The writing seemed too easy. I didn't feel like I was working hard enough. The blog of the self seems too narcissistic and pointless.

So I started Fiendish Hooves and then later Sustainable Stories to do my real, hard writing. Fiendish Hooves also served as a platform to practice my drawing skills and to move away from the "juvenile" mediocre paint drawings. I guess I was just too good for AM in the Morning.

After the initial first posts that inspired the themes of each respective blog, it felt like a chore to crank out posts I thought people would enjoy reading. That's the problem right there: I was trying too hard to please You.

Don't get me wrong: I'm proud of the posts that came out of all that hard work. I did enjoy the finished product when I finally got around to it. The problem is, I'm obviously not motivated enough to keep up either blog. Unfortunately. I think they are both swell ideas and could really go somewhere, but I just can't seem to get into it.

So now I'm wondering if I should go back to writing the "easy" vapid stuff on this blog....if only to get me writing more often again. I feel guilty, even now, at the thought of not putting time into another Fiendish Hooves or a Sustainable Story. Those are what the people like! They might make me famous! I get to show off my craft of telling a story! It's funny! And so on and so on.

So is writing supposed to be easy or hard? And should I have the reader in mind, or should I write for myself, and be thrilled if someone out there just so happens to think I also wrote it for them? I'm so troubled by these questions.

One thing I'm fairly certain about is that I'm clearly over-thinking the whole realm of writing.