Yes it does suck, along with recreational drug use, drinking, ear tunnels and Christian rock/metal.

Every Coldplay song sounds the same, and they practically put me to sleep…
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I’ll start off this rant with a bold statement: Most modern pop music downright sucks. It’s all talentless garbage nowadays. Even some genres of metal and hardcore have fallen to the level of pop. Pop, or popular music, can hardly be considered real music.
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Born of Osiris’ second album, “A Higher Place” was released on July 7, 2009, to much anticipation from the fans, myself included. In summary, it’s a superb record, and a worthy succesor to “The New Reign.”
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There are tons of things I’d like to write about, but unfortunately they’re not important enough to warrant separate articles. So here you go, a bunch of rants and updates, all in one!

Academy Awards

The 2009 Academy Awards pretty much sucked this year. I can’t believe Slumdog Millionaire won 8 awards. It’s not even that good of a movie. I mean 2008 had a load of really good movies, so how did some film that I never even heard about win the awards? I think “The Dark Knight” should have won for best movie. At least it’s a good action movie, and not some Indian drama.

Metal Detectors?

My school is still pursuing the metal detector policy. Except it won’t be regular, it will be unannounced, on random days. Now I would be alright with this if it was for our safety, but it’s not. Rather, it’s to stop students from bringing in electronics. Specifically, to stop the socialites from texting during classes. They text, they fail, and they lower the school average. So now we all have to suffer because some people can’t go without texting every 2 minutes. Now I really don’t care about my cell phone, and I could easily do without it. What I am worried about is my iPod Touch. Music is like my morning coffee, it wakes me up and energizes me. Mark my words, I will find a way past this system.

Conservapedia

Think Wikipedia, but run by Christian bigots. All the articles are completely biased, and it’s actually quite funny (and sad) to read their articles.

Custom PC cases

Most of which annoy me. Why do 90% of the custom PC cases out there have blue LED lights and transparent windows on the sides? I mean isn’t the point of a custom case to look different?

Other Stuff

WPWebHost is having a contest for best WordPress blog design. There are several categories, meaning I won’t have to compete against the likes of KomodoMedia (against which I have zero chance of winning). I’m going to be trying for the “Best Clean & Minimalist” category. Meaning there will be some more minor design updates to try to clean the blog up a bit and get it in tip-top shape.

I also have a ton of work on the weekend, so most of the updates will probably be on weekdays.

Badminton at 7:10 am has been turning out okay, and I haven’t had much trouble in waking up on time.

There are about 2 weeks left until the big Bleeding Through show in the city.  Bleeding Through, As Blood Runs Black, Impending Doom, and the Acacia Strain are playing, making it a rather awesome lineup. 

Today is Valentine’s Dayâ�¢, which is yet another holiday commercialized by the likes of Hallmark. Nothing special at alll about Valentine’s Day. These days, it’s all about who can buy the biggest, most overpriced gifts.

Vacation has started for me, but I have work on some days next week. Soon I’ll be able to afford a nice electric guitar for myself. Acoustics are no fun- you can’t make them squeal, you can’t do insane breakdowns on them, and most of the songs you can play on an acoustic sound pretty much the same.

Oh, and I finally have a gym class now, thanks to the ever-so helpful guidance counselors at my school. It only took 2 weeks. And it’s at 7:10 am, meaning I’m going to be waking up a wee bit earlier on school days. On the positive side, I have two free periods in which to loiter in the hallways and pester my former teachers.

Rap is crap

Yes it is. Most of it, anyway. First you have those idiot rappers with the dumber-than-dumb names. Flava Flav, Flo Rida, Fitty-cent, and so forth. Then you have the topic(s) that rap ever-so intelligently covers, such as: sex, sex, and maybe sex. Almost every rap song out there implies making love in one way or another, in various scenarios, cleverly summed up in the following sentence from a reader:

The last problem with rap is the actual music in it. Although you can’t even call it that. Most of rap consists of a simple, repeating beat that goes on for the entire song. Although that’s not to say there aren’t some enjoyable rap songs, but the majority of new rap these days is garbage. 

Much of America’s population is getting dumber and dumber every year. I can safely confirm this for several reasons:

1. Test difficulty. While standardized tests tend to vary somewhat in difficulty, they’re generally getting easier and easier. Even the SAT has been dumbed down (though I’m not complaining). In NY, the Math A and Math B curricula are being phased out in favor of an easier, simplified math curriculum. Many teens are getting dumber, and the officials are easing requirements to make the numbers look satisfactory.
2. TV. Many TV shows are getting dumber and dumber. The shows on MTV are a good example of this trend. Kid’s shows are also getting dumber and more pointless.
3. Music is generally getting dumber. See argument in next section.
4. The newspapers are being written in 4^th grade English, with large amounts of pictures and very few words.

Music is getting worse

Music is going downhill these days as well. What most kids nowadays listen to consists of one or more of the below:

• Artificially generated, repetitive beats
• Talking, rapping, computer-enhanced singing, etc.
• Pointless, repetitive, unoriginal lyrics (rap, pop)

Instrumental and/or vocal  talent is clearly not needed to be a popular musician these days. The computer does all the work these days, making even the most off-key singers sound like opera masters. The music itself is no better. Any 16-year old with a copy of FL Studio can make a hit song nowadays (not going to point any fingers). Techno these days sounds like passing a corrupted music file through a 28k internet connection. Rock is in no better shape, though. There are the obvious offenders, like Paramore and The Jonas Brothers, who play boring, uninspired riffs over and over again.

Move to DTV already!

Even though Obama wants to push back the official DTV transition date, I still think the cutoff date should be February 17, 2009, instead of sometime in June. Sweden’s already switched completely, and they did it all the way in 2007. Know why they could do that? It’s because their country isn’t full of blithering, techno-phobic idiots. Who cares if some people’s TV’s stop working? Let it be a punishment for their stupidty and ignorance.

Other Stuff

The fake, commercial holiday known as Valentine’s^® Day^® is on Saturday this year. It’s really a pointless holiday, in which people buy each other useless, overpriced gifts.

In other news, I’m feeling a lot better today, and I still don’t have gym class. I went to the Guidance Suite today during my free period. The secretary told me to come back after school, at 2:45pm. When I came back after school, I waited for about half an hour until 3:15pm, and then everybody got kicked out of the office, with the secretary saying “Come back tomorrow.” I hate dealing with school administration…