Question: "Who Hates Emo Most?" Answer: Who Cares

This sidebar was in the recent "2006 Year in Review" issue of Rolling Stone...

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Who Hates Emo Most?

Dave Draiman
(Disturbed)
"All these pussy-ass, makeup-wearing, suit wearing mama's boys...are a disgrace to rock & roll."

Maynard James Keenan
(Tool)
"The emo shit's just a backlash to rap rock. It's the same cookie-cutter crap. It's music written by frat douche bags for frat douche bags, to give roofies to unsuspecting girls before date rape ensues. 'Oh, I'm sensitive. I feel. Here, have a Roofie Coolata.'"

Austin Winkler
(Hinder)
"We were the only rock band in Oklahoma City when everything else was that artsy sceamo bullshit that nobody listens to. They're a bunch of fairies."

Brandon Flowers
(The Killers)
Called Fall Out Boy "dangerous" in the U.K. press, adding, "There's a creature inside me that wants to beat all those bands to death."

England
The crowd at the U.K.'s Reading Festival showered My Chemical Romance with debris, prompting frontman Gerard Way to announce, "Thanks for all the piss. Thanks for all the golf balls. Thanks for all the apples. Thanks for all the sticky shit." The crowd also attacked Panic! at the Disco singer Brendon Urie, knocking him out cold with a bottle.
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I am not a huge fan of 'emo' or 'screamo' music. However, I do find much of it original (despite some band-to-band similarities) and melodical. I decided to blog this because the article pissed me off. Not so much because Rolling Stone put it in their magazine (although still lame), but because it includes musicians talking shit about other musicians. Emo isn't without talent, so maybe these "rockers" should focus on platinum artists that play no instruments, and dance better than they sing. Allow me to take them on individually...

#1 - Disturbed. Emo is a disgrace to rock n' roll? In my opinion, the pay-for-play radio hard rock bands like Disturbed are the problem with 'rock n roll'. Just what IS 'rock n roll'? Disturbed? Pushing out album-after-shitty-album that all sounds like watered-down wannabe-metal hard rock? I think their facial piercings are just as sissy as a "makeup-wearing mama's boy". For space, I will leave the "Immortal Rock-Gods that wore make-up" list off this blog.

#2 - Tool. I feel Keenan's comments are a tad off-base. Maybe he is getting emo mixed up. Aren't emo artists generally against the "frat douche bag"-roofie-dropping-bullies? Maybe I have emo all wrong? (Don't think so.) Also, see Hinder at #3. Isn't Tool an "artsy" metal band? Wait. Isn't "music" an art form?

#3 - Hinder. Wow, this is a great one. Maybe Rolling Stone put this one in there as a gag? First, isn't the song Lips Of An Angel a giant "rock-n-roll" pussyfest? The song sucks out loud. Not to mention the rest of their garbage. A song called "Get Stoned"? YEAH MAN! You wear that shit on your sleeve! Nothing sells an album better to musically-challenged, super-consumer high-schoolers than a song called "Get Stoned". They have to put a 'T&A' lingerie model on the cover to sell albums. Maybe because the band is a shmorgasboard of confusing "fairy" hairstyles.

#4 - Killers. This one surprised me because I love The Killers. Aren't The Killers supposed to be a throwback to 80's bands like Joy Division and The Smiths? Either way, The Killers are awfully 'pretty' to be trashing emo bands.

#5 - My Chemical Romance and Panic! in England. This is fitting, seeing how these bands sing about the same shit that happens to them. I guess their 'underdog' lyrics are no joke. Keep throwing bottles, and they will keep writing songs.

There is something annoying about talented musicians putting down other talented musicians. (Talented as in playing instruments and keeping in tune. The basics. Not necessarily an ear for greatness.) If something sounds different, that is probably a good thing. I wouldn't want to carry on a conversation with 10 people that always say the same thing. Give me 10 people that will all say something different.

Life In The Woods - "Where I Lived, And What I Lived For"

Here are some of my personal highlighted passages from the chapter "Where I Lived, And What I Lived For" (updating as I go along):

-Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly-acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air - to a higher life than we fell asleep from.

-The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.

-I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

-Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

-By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit every where, which still is built on purely illusory foundations.

-Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails...Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses.

-Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance...

Life In The Woods - "Economy"

I am currently going through Henry David Thoreau's Walden and highlighting my favorite passages. This serves two purposes. One, is for when I read it again. That way, I can see what I liked best the last time I read it. The second, is for when someone else reads it. Whether it be Julie, or one of our children in 15-20 years. That way they can see Daddy's emotional responses to the book. Hell, maybe they can highlight their own passages in a different color for my grandchildren.

I just came up with a third purpose today. I can post some of the words here on my blog for you fine people. If you don't know what Walden is about, you can read this. Basically, Thoreau lives a life of solitude for two years on the banks of Walden Pond, just outside of Concord, MA. He writes on numerous subjects including solitude, the environment, economics, and living a simple life. What he means by a simple life is not being tied down by anything but your own spirit. This includes possessions, land, money, and employment. Here are some of my personal highlighted passages from the chapter "Economy" (updating as I go along):

-Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.

-One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle.

-For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.

-Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.

-I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.

-I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes...Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.

-...we are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their weaten.

-Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged?

-No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

-The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly.

-When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of my friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries.

-In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely.

Friendship for the strong-willed!

A friend of mine recently posted a blog about friendship. I posted a comment in response that I thought worthy to post on my blog. I might even expand on it later. But for now here are my words:

"Some observations from your slightly-older and significantly-creepier friend...
I think it is natural for your 'true friend' pool to dwindle as you get older. I like to call the ages of 21-25 "Post 21". These are the years that you still feel and act like a young buck. You still talk to your high school friends. Your jobs suck, you party hard, and you keep a larger pool of pals. A "Pal Pool", if you will.
Then you hit your mid/late-20's. This is called the "Now you really look like your parents" phase. At this point in their lives, many people begin taking life too seriously. They gradually stop talking to their less-serious friends, and selfishly select new friends that fit their life goals. I understand the "surrounding yourself with people that make you better" theory, but not at the expense of people you have history with. For what is the point of making and having great memories with people, only to let them go? I choose history as the starting point for keeping friends. You can't let people go that you share significant life memories with. What a waste of your life!
[12/14 - You would have a memory involving old friends, yet the people involved in that memory have dissolved from your life. But what good is the memory if the real people are gone? Of course, this doesn't apply to death. Memories are everything if there is no more person. A person is truly dead to the earthly world if no memory or record of them exists.]

An important measure of friendship is the ability to pick up where you left off, regardless of the passage of time. Friendship should be a life-long commitment. It's not so much the quantity of contact, but quality and persistence. So if a few years go by without talking to someone, it is on both parties to pick up the phone and say hello. Having friends in your life isn't about moving on and always making new friends. Those aren't friends. They are temporary acquaintances. A friend is someone you cross paths with, realize the 'destiny' involved and never take for granted, and hold on to for life. If the good Lord put that person in your life, it is of the utmost that you embrace it.

Plus, I believe Thanksgiving and Christmas [have become] commercial scams. People also make them out to be special days when you get off your ass and actually talk to friends and family. The purposes of these holidays should be a year-round state of mind..."

Dearest Blog, I missed your caress...

Blog: "Say, Wes...what is going on with you lately? I missed you."

Wes: I missed you, too. I just recently finished up the Fall semester at UCF. Another successful one. It feels good and I only wish I had this frame of mind 8 years ago. Better late than never. You probably don't know because I never blogged it (You like that, don't you? I love blogging you, baby.), I was accepted back into UCF on the Academic Amnesty program last January. It is set up for people in my situation that had academic difficulties and are returning years later. However, I was informed that I was on the "Damn, You REALLY F*&ked Up!" list, or, people that left on such a bad note that they may never get back into UCF. I am special! But they couldn't resist giving me another chance to crash and burn. It is just a shame that they give people such a hard time that want to start over with their education. All the while, they can't seem to say NO to 18-year-olds and continue to be the largest university in the state (and way up in the national ranks). Don't worry, the "Academic Standards Committee" will get a brown-streaked "Thank You" letter when I finish. (Post note: I was denied before in 2003, and they were about to deny me a second time if it weren't for my awesome advisor-lady pulling some strings.)

Anyways, this week I had a final review for a drawing class and a final exam for an art history class. To celebrate my victories, we are now in Germanton, NC visiting my parents. They moved earlier this year after about 30 years in Florida. We miss them, but they have a beautiful home in the country, with mountains to boot. My Dad has been wanting to "go home" for years now (he was born and raised in Raleigh). My Mom was born in Connecticut, but missed being born in Greensboro, NC by about 3 months. Dad is enjoying life without Palm Bay traffic. Traffic in Orlando is better than Palm Bay, because it MOVES.

It is pretty cold now and hit 10 degrees last night. I can't help myself from going outside every 30 minutes or so with a t-shirt on. At first it isn't cold because your breast is still warm from inside. Then you see how long you can stay out there before you freeze your ass off. You know those old guys that annually swim in freezing lakes? They are badass. I am not badass like that, but I try.

A few months ago, Julie and I were at the library in the non-fiction section. There was this book with drawings about our body parts and what they are for. I never knew it looked like that inside! There were also pictures of naked men and women on top of each other, hugging and kissing. We were embarrassed because a librarian walked by and we were giggling. We still don't know if she knew what we were laughing at! But there were lots of books about the same thing, so maybe she did!! Haha. Totally embarrassing. Anyways, we nervously checked the book out because it had information on how to have babies. We had been asking each other about it, but neither of us really knew where to start. To make a long story short, we read the book and had some really nervous nights. That was about 10-11 weeks ago. We went to the doctor and he told us that Julie was pregnant! We were really excited. The doctor was very helpful, and seemed surprised at the amount of questions we had! ("How does the baby get out?!") We have been nervous to tell too many people, but we get more and more excited as the days go by.

So that is what's going on right now, Blog. What's up with you?

Blog: ...