10 Reasons Why I haven't Posted Recently

Reasons 1 through 7 (really ruining my life): Tower Defense Games.  If you are at all susceptible to video game addictions, especially when games involve collecting points of some kind to unlock skills which will make it easier to collect more points to unlock still more skills (ad inifinitum) stay away from these kinds of games.  On the other hand, those towers ain't gonna defend themselves (unless you power them up appropriately).  Having exhausted Plants Versus Zombies, currently my drug of choice is Cursed Treasure (screen shot on the right).

Reason 8: American Horror Story.  If you like horror or alternatively want to see some television that plays with familiar plots and types but simultaneously stretches and lampoons the boundaries of commercial narrative (a la Twin Peaks), you must watch this show.  Also if you like Dylan McDermot's butt--and if you don't, you probably will after a few episodes.

Reason 9: Homeland.  Claire Daines triumphant return to television.  What if Cloe from 24 got her own show in which swearing and nudity were totally allowed (which, like urinating or eating food, is off limits in the land of 24)?  Also what if Cloe were a much more complex character whose trials and tribulations mattered a lot, lot more?  That's just to get started with what makes this spy drama cool (if only for those who shouted at the tvs in the 90s that they would treat Angela Chase soooooooo much better than Jordan Catalano ever would).  I would perhaps write more at the conclusion of the season; the show promises to be a good critical discussion piece.

Reason 10: Math.  Yes, I'm still studying math, because apparently for the man to let me in to his PhD programs in literature, he must be satisifed that I know a million and one uses for the pythagorean theorem.

The semester is ending soon, so hopefully that will translate in to more time for sitting still, being quiet, and telling the world and the web all about it.

Metric "Help I'm Alive" (Finally something besides the written word!)

I don't know whether it is the onset of chronic unhipness that seems to share a chromosome with the gene responsible for graying hair or if, perhaps, I was never hip in the first place--the two may not be mutually exclusive in any case--but the older I get, the more I can fell the power of pop music, regardless of its cheesy, commercial, cliche, or blah blah blah qualities.

This song would be an example, as would be a few others from my recent listening experiences that just a few years ago I would have dismissed as what I sometimes label "government music" (The Dead Kennedys 0:42) or plastic music. 

And now that I've invoked this change in my listening habits, I'm not sure what to say about it.

[Awkward pause in blog entry]

In honest, I think the change is due to my time my exposure to Korean pop music.  Much K-pop is intentionally derivative and a key reason (is there ever any other?) is economic: to appeal outside of South Korea, the music has to be familiar to other audiences.   Anyway, I've spent time from this angle considering the old debate that I used to have with an unabashedly hipster friend back at Syracuse University: must music be obscure and or original to be authentic?

And a more pressing question is: at what level does the originality, authenticity, cynicism, or whatever commercial ethos affecting an artists material affect the pleasurability of the sound?  Or must one rather decide that they don't like something and ask their interlocutors to kindly ignore their tapping foot?

Of course Theodor Adorno has devoted much more brainpower to this question than I (or anyone else) ever could.  

 

So I will not pretend to write anything so dialectically aware.  I would simply like to offer the above song (the video isn't the point, though its got a few interesting qualities) as something that I heard for the first time today and really really liked.  It is another testament to the pleasurable repeatability of musical patterns, for better or for worse.