Pretentiousness (Not mine for once!)
I never update this damned journal and I'm going to try to get on some sort of schedule with that at some point in time. Not like I expect everyone to be waiting around with baited breath for updates (by everyone I mean all two of you), but I paid for this service, so I might as well use it.
To get to the point, pretentiousness has been a recurring theme in many ways in the past week for me. It started with some idiot on my Don't Amend.com mailing list sending her "unsubscribe" notice to the mailing list. This spawned a days worth of idiotic replies to said mailing list by people bitching about the amount of e-mail that this was generating. Way to go geniuses! Let's perpetuate the very thing that annoys us most! Don't Amend.com ended up calling the event a "hacking" incident, but I think that they are overreacting a bit. Along with the stupid commentary e-mails, were a bunch of tinfoil conspiracy types, ranting and raving about the "vast right wing conspiracy" that had targetted the mailing list. *Sigh*. Don't get me wrong, I think that these people are fighting the good fight on the "Defense of Marriage Amendment" issue, but dear fucking Zeus on a goddamn pink elephant, does everything HAVE to be some personal attack by the other side? Does everyone really consider themselves and their cause important enough to warrant attention from the power wielders on the other side of the issue? Granted, you'll get this level of paranoia on the extremely conservative side and it makes me equally as queasy. Get over yourselves people; sometimes things happen because people are flaming idiots!
The past two weekends I've also attended D.C./Baltimore team semi's and finals matches... what can I say about the level of self importance at these things? Crickey, many poets are simply known for their undying love for themselves and their ideas, so it's only natural that I'd spend part of the evening awash in someone else's smelly pretentious ooze. I won't name names, but there was one particularly egregious offender on each evening that made me want to pick the low sodium soy sauce up off of the table in front of me and pour it directly into my ears, hopefully muffling the sound of his rhetoric. I understand that being an artist of any sort can be a heady thing; people look up to you and admire you for creating something, especially when it jibes with their personal beliefs. It's easy to get a swelled head, and even easier to think that you are somehow profound and enlightened as a result. But, and please trust me on this, you are no different than the rest of us poor schlubs with little or no writing talent... we're just a little bit more bearable because we don't vent our personal grievances to the world in front of an audience.
Topping off the pretentious meter is this particular website that I stumbled across on the somethingawful.com forums (may they all rot in hell for drawing this to my attention) Dear God, Please Strike Me Blind Now Okay?. To forewarn those with more delicate dispositions than I, this is the Xanga (an online journal community, mostly populated by adolescents) site for the man who "Did it all for the nookie... ". I fully expect the next edition of Webster's to include this freaking site in the very DEFINITION of pretentious. I did some leg work, and this man is my age... trust me, you would never guess this from reading his journal entries, which read astounding like those of a 14 year old girl. Damn, it's like he went back in a time machine and stole some of my crappy, post-pubescent ramblings! It's sad, pathetic, mind boggling and fantastically amusing all at once. The best part is the commentary, most of which comes from the under 18 crowd, who quite understandably identify with this guy and his music. They have an excuse; he, on the other hand has none. At 33, you should not be lingering in a post-adolescent fantasy land, living off of feedback from people who are no longer rightfully your peers. We all have to grow up some time and stop with the self-centered, "I'm much deeper than you, you don't understand me, you can never feel my pain" crap that defined us as teenagers. This is a sad testament to what fame can do to you if left unchecked by reality.
Well, back to our regularly scheduled updates after this, whatever they might be... I'll try to wade through some more of my fanfiction as I have to do something with the crap (other than throwing it out of course.. it's far too amusing for that).
To get to the point, pretentiousness has been a recurring theme in many ways in the past week for me. It started with some idiot on my Don't Amend.com mailing list sending her "unsubscribe" notice to the mailing list. This spawned a days worth of idiotic replies to said mailing list by people bitching about the amount of e-mail that this was generating. Way to go geniuses! Let's perpetuate the very thing that annoys us most! Don't Amend.com ended up calling the event a "hacking" incident, but I think that they are overreacting a bit. Along with the stupid commentary e-mails, were a bunch of tinfoil conspiracy types, ranting and raving about the "vast right wing conspiracy" that had targetted the mailing list. *Sigh*. Don't get me wrong, I think that these people are fighting the good fight on the "Defense of Marriage Amendment" issue, but dear fucking Zeus on a goddamn pink elephant, does everything HAVE to be some personal attack by the other side? Does everyone really consider themselves and their cause important enough to warrant attention from the power wielders on the other side of the issue? Granted, you'll get this level of paranoia on the extremely conservative side and it makes me equally as queasy. Get over yourselves people; sometimes things happen because people are flaming idiots!
The past two weekends I've also attended D.C./Baltimore team semi's and finals matches... what can I say about the level of self importance at these things? Crickey, many poets are simply known for their undying love for themselves and their ideas, so it's only natural that I'd spend part of the evening awash in someone else's smelly pretentious ooze. I won't name names, but there was one particularly egregious offender on each evening that made me want to pick the low sodium soy sauce up off of the table in front of me and pour it directly into my ears, hopefully muffling the sound of his rhetoric. I understand that being an artist of any sort can be a heady thing; people look up to you and admire you for creating something, especially when it jibes with their personal beliefs. It's easy to get a swelled head, and even easier to think that you are somehow profound and enlightened as a result. But, and please trust me on this, you are no different than the rest of us poor schlubs with little or no writing talent... we're just a little bit more bearable because we don't vent our personal grievances to the world in front of an audience.
Topping off the pretentious meter is this particular website that I stumbled across on the somethingawful.com forums (may they all rot in hell for drawing this to my attention) Dear God, Please Strike Me Blind Now Okay?. To forewarn those with more delicate dispositions than I, this is the Xanga (an online journal community, mostly populated by adolescents) site for the man who "Did it all for the nookie... ". I fully expect the next edition of Webster's to include this freaking site in the very DEFINITION of pretentious. I did some leg work, and this man is my age... trust me, you would never guess this from reading his journal entries, which read astounding like those of a 14 year old girl. Damn, it's like he went back in a time machine and stole some of my crappy, post-pubescent ramblings! It's sad, pathetic, mind boggling and fantastically amusing all at once. The best part is the commentary, most of which comes from the under 18 crowd, who quite understandably identify with this guy and his music. They have an excuse; he, on the other hand has none. At 33, you should not be lingering in a post-adolescent fantasy land, living off of feedback from people who are no longer rightfully your peers. We all have to grow up some time and stop with the self-centered, "I'm much deeper than you, you don't understand me, you can never feel my pain" crap that defined us as teenagers. This is a sad testament to what fame can do to you if left unchecked by reality.
Well, back to our regularly scheduled updates after this, whatever they might be... I'll try to wade through some more of my fanfiction as I have to do something with the crap (other than throwing it out of course.. it's far too amusing for that).