I've come to a realization about myself.  I like to create things in an attempt to express myself, and when I'm unable to, I tend to go crazy.  I have to let people know what I'm thinking in SOME way, otherwise I feel like an empty shell that no one gives two shits about.  It's like I have to put myself out there in an effort to make people notice me.

I feel like more people in my life know me for what I do than for who I am...  I don't know if that's good or bad, but I know it seems to be the only reason anyone really knows me in the first place.  In a way, I feel like a celebrity, and honestly, I've always had that kind of mentality - that when it comes down to it, I'm really just an entertainer, and when people aren't so sure about me, they can at least appreciate my work.  I see this on Facebook a lot.  If all I do is post status updates or short notes about my boring life, no one really cares unless they can somehow relate - but if I post some pictures that I took, or a song that I made, or even some prose about how I'm feeling or my beliefs (like this entry, for example), THEN the comments start rolling in.  And I guess that's a given, because I am an incredibly boring and plain person.  I never really have anything interesting to say, and the only time anyone really cares about what I have to say is if I say it through one of these expressionistic mediums.

And so, maybe that's why I thrive to express myself...  It's the only way I can get noticed, and feel like anyone cares about anything that I do.  Maybe that's why for the past four years, I've had this inexplicable desire to keep a personal blog and express myself on the internet for tons of random people to see.  My life just doesn't seem worthwhile unless I'm expressing myself in some way...

That being said, I'm hoping to get a DSLR camera for Christmas, and the anticipation is killing me...  I keep thinking about how I want to just bundle up and walk around town, taking pictures of anything and everything I see.  I want to get some really good winter shots this time around...  I hate the winter in terms of the temperature, but it always paints a pretty surreal picture.  I'm in the mood to take pictures, but I just can't afford buying and developing film right now, so...  I guess I'm stuck in that boat until Christmas - supposing I really am getting the camera.

This is post 2/5 in this series.

Previous posts:

Introduction

The 1st Semester

Below is the playlist with the chosen songs for the 2nd semester, and also the link directly to the playlist should you want to link directly to Grooveshark.



The 2nd Semester

This playlist was equally as hard to make as the first one, possibly more-so...  Like I said, the whole first year was just a bitch to come up with these songs; the two semesters after this are practically overflowing with music, and the challenge there is going to be picking the BEST ones instead of picking enough songs in the first place, lol.  But we'll get there when we get there.  I actually did manage to get quite a few more songs thrown into the mix this time around, so it's got that going for it at least.  The second semester, as you'll notice (or already have) is heavily influenced by music of the past - mostly the '90s.  Why?  I really couldn't tell you, it just was.  I think that having services available like Ruckus and later Grooveshark that allowed you track down your favorite nostalgia inducing music and listen to it as much as you like might have played a part in that, though.  Also, I'll mention that, throughout this whole project, my choice of music could be heavily influenced by popular movies and/or video games, and in this case, it was Guitar Hero 3, so...  If you're at all familiar with that game, a lot of these songs will be redundant to you.  I know, that really sucks...  But the whole point of this project is to detail my musical differences throughout college, and leaving that out would be simply ignorant of what I listened to and why.  Needless to say, I probably won't put a whole lot of explanation into those songs.

My first semester was a rough one - between my grades suffering and having a dead-end job that only lasted four months, and not to mention the feeling that I had disappointed my family in just about every regard, I was pretty stressed.  The family was more than understanding, though.  So much so, that they encouraged me to attend school part time until I got back on my feet, and also allowed me to remain jobless for the semester for the same reason.  I think my dad also vowed to stay out of my business and trust me with school rather than constantly riding my ass about it, because that whole semester, he never said a single thing about my grades, not until finals.  It was pretty empowering for me.

Life in the Arctic is one of those empowering, "this is a new beginning" type songs, and walking through campus listening to that song in your headphones can really make you feel like you're in a movie.  I often picture it as a song that would be playing at a graduation sequence in a movie, or at the beginning of a triumphant return of a well known character (yes I think about that kind of shit - don't forget I'm a wanna-be film major!).  Well, that's kind of how I felt at the time...  I've returned to school to kick it's ass after a delightfully shitty semester, and this time, shit's getting DONE.  lol.  I'm weird like that, so sue me.

I was still continuing my habit of staying in College Town all day, and returning to Home Town every night to sleep, only to wake up the next day and do it all over again.  My girlfriend's past roommate decided to take a break from college and move to another town with her boyfriend, and another friend of ours, who had been couch surfing the previous semester, took her place.  So, things weren't really all that different - it was basically the same old song and dance, minus one person.  My first and second semesters really did share a certain similarity, so much so that sometimes I can't recall what exactly happened when.

I was enrolled in three classes; Government, English Comp I, and a journalism class called Media and Society.  Oh yeah, and I also had to take a one hour "assessment" class because I was on probation, and I apparently needed to sit in a classroom one hour a week so that some counsellors could tell us to get our shit together or get kicked out.  That's pretty much all it was...  They were nice about it, though, so it wasn't too intolerable.  My classes were all particularly easy, but I am also a particularly lazy and un-motivated person, lol.  Of coarse, my dad pulled the whole "You're taking nine hours and have no job, so you better damned well do good this semester!" speech, but, that's practically all he said to me about my grades all that semester.

Life at this point was pretty cut and dry...  Things just kind of ran their coarse on a daily basis, and nothing interesting ever really went on.  I think one of the most eventful things was a tornado that occurred in the late February early March time frame, if memory serves correctly.  Keep in mind, GF lives in a trailer park, so...  This shit's serious business.  We don't fuck around when a tornadoe's coming!  Anyway, when I'd normally go home at night, I was kind of kept from doing that on this particular night.  By the time we finally decided to call it a night in hopes that we wouldn't wake up in the land of Oz, it was two or three in the morning; I wasn't about to drive home.  I agreed to sleep in the living room and listen to the radio, for any further broadcasts about the storm.  One of the songs that played that night was Pocket full of Sunshine, and...  If you're wondering how in blue blazes that ended up on my playlist, I'm really not a huge fan of pop, or whatever you'd call this; but when I was laying there on that couch and that song started playing, something about the whole situation was extremely serene, in a really weird way...  I don't know what it was; it could have been that I was just tired, and it could have been that the lyrics were, ironically, "take me away," or possibly and probably both; but whatever the case, I thought that I would include the song in my list.  It's not a bad song, actually, but it's by no means something that I listen to over and over again.

One was just one of those songs that I ended up randomly liking, for whatever reason, and of coarse I heard it from Guitar Hero - it's actually my favorite song to play on GH3.  I really don't like Metallica all that much, but I really like this song for some reason.  Under the Milky Way is just another one of those real serene songs that I'd listen to by myself a lot, as was Dreamer.  Basket Case was the ringtone that would go off when my girlfriend called me, so the first thing you'd hear was "do you have the time to listen to me whine about nothing and everything all at once?" just to be funny.  And The Freshman...  What Freshman soundtrack would be complete without this song?  I've always loved this song, even back when I was a kid listening to it in the '90s.  "We were merely freshmen."

My dad is a big Simon and Garfunkel fan, so that's why songs like The Sound of Silence and The Boxer made it onto this list.  For some reason, one day I randomly decided to try and figure out what that one song was that I remember him listening to, and it turned out to be The Boxer, so I listened to that quite a bit.

I think Sorrow is probably one of my favorite songs on the Flyleaf album, so I listened to that one a lot as well...  Kind of one of those mellow, sorrowful songs (obviously).  And then, lastly, I chose Face Down because my girlfriend's roommate at the time, the one who had been couch-surfing the previous semester, had a real douchebag of a boyfriend that apparently was abusive to her, and he was always just a real ass-hole to her.  She stayed with him for so long - actually didn't end up dumping him until just recently - and no one knew what the hell she saw in him.  Face Down was popular at the time, and it reminded me a lot of her situation, so that's why I remember that one.

The second semester really wasn't all too eventful, as you've probably noticed.  I actually did good in the three classes I was taking, making straight B's across the board.  My dad didn't ask me a thing about my grades until after the semester was over, and I got to say that I actually did good.  In reality, I didn't deserve B's in most of those classes...  I was just so good at BSing papers and racking up bonus points that that's how it turned out.

By the end of the semester, I was in talks with some high school friends about moving into an apartment together for next semester.  We hit a few snags, but everything turned out and we were set to move in in July.  I couldn't wait to FINALLY move away from home!  Also, around the time that we got that settled, I got a job interview at a tech services department for one of the colleges at my university.  The boss was my former neighbor, and I ended up getting the job and starting in the summer.  Things were definitely starting to look up after a particularly uneventful semester.

Stay tuned!

This is post 1/5 in this series.

Previous posts:

Introduction

Below is the playlist with the chosen songs for the 1st semester, and also the link directly to the playlist should you want to link directly to Grooveshark.



The 1st Semester

The first year of my college career was really hard to do, because...  I simply don't recall what all I listened to, outside of a LOT of Switchfoot and a few random songs from other bands.  Specifically, the first semester was the hardest, and I assure you that this is the shortest, and probably the most bland playlist I will be submitting, so...  Don't let your judgement of this entire series rest on this playlist alone.  Seriously, I'm having the opposite problem with every other playlist; too MANY songs to choose from, lol, and I really don't even want to include this one, but if I didn't, it would throw everything off.  It's simply how the cards fell, so, here it goes...

My first semester was marked by a lot of things.  If any of you have attended college, you surely remember what it's like to step into those huge classrooms for the first time, and if you were as unlucky as me, you didn't have ANY classes with ANYONE that you knew.  I definitely took into account the perils of being a freshman when putting together this list.  There was also my job life - I worked at Wal-Mart, and I started work and school on the same day.  So, while learning the ropes at school, I was also learning the ropes at work, training to be a cashier.  It was an exciting and scary time of my life. 

Just a little background on my situation:  I lived with my parents in a town that is about ten miles away from my college town, because they said that I had to live at home my first year, but I spent most of my time at my girlfriends between classes and work anyway.  Basically, for my whole first year, I would hang out in my college town until midnight, drive ten miles home, go to sleep, wake up, drive ten miles back to school/work in the morning, and repeat the process.  There was really no point in me living at home even then, I would have been happy on my girlfriend's couch...  But that would have been "inappropriate."

Quixoticelixer serves as kind of an anthem for this whole project...  Though I've changed a lot, I still haven't changed all that much, and this song still has a lot of relevance to me today.  I think it's a good kick-off for the beginning of my college career; it's delightfully upbeat, but at the same time it's got this bittersweet theme going on, the whole "perfect storm" thing.  And I really was loving it...  At first.

Classes began to get dull and boring, as did work.  For me, standing behind a register and scanning shit was NOT my cup of tea, as I soon found out.  "I don't want to be here, I don't want to see this now."  Everything had lost it's excitement, and I was begining to feel bored with all of it.  Chem 6a pretty much sums up the whole experience.  You start to wonder "is this what I've been reduced to?"  At the same time, I was feeling lonely in that I had lost contact with about 80% of most of my friends, and it felt like I had left them behind, and it really felt like the first time that had ever happened...  I felt that if I was going to accomplish anything, I NEEDED those people in my life to believe in me. 

The Pretender was a song that was at the peak of it's popularity at this time in my life, so I heard it on the radio a lot on my drive to/from work.  I liked the lyrics about not being like the others, so the song was pretty empowering to me at the time.  One of the most empowering songs, though, was an oldskool Switchfoot song called Love is the Movement.  I was Christian at the time, and this song was really core to my belief that love was a movement, and the only real way to convert non-believers.  I still believe that love is equally powerful, just not in the same way.  I also had another Xanga site that I had devoted to Christianity and this idea of Christian love.

Sittin' at a Bar was included in this list because my girlfriend's roommate was in love with it, and would always listen to it - like, repeatedly.  I didn't much like it at the time, but it was just one of those things...  The only thing really relevant to my life at the time in this song was that my girlfriend lived in a trailer park. 

Kryptonite was kind of a homeage to an earlier point in my life where my Christian band-mates nicknamed me Superman.  Why?  I honestly don't remember...  but this immediately became my theme song.  I remember hearing the song on the radio on my way back from class one day and realizing that it had some relevance...  In a way, I felt like school and work were both making me crazy, and I just wanted someone that would still call me Superman, even if I failed miserably at everything.  I wanted those high school friends back, I wanted a feeling of worth once more...  I wanted to do something that everyone would enjoy, but was entrapped in this whole school and work ordeal.

November rolled around, and it came time to ask off for Thanksgiving.  A nice couple of days away from everything with my family was all I really wanted at the time.  But, unfortunately, those ass-holes at Wal-mart only gave me two of the four days that I asked off for.  My parents, at this point, flat out told me that they wouldn't blame me if I quit; they knew I was miserable.  I waited it out, though, and spent Thanksgiving with my cousin's grand-parents.  It wasn't the same, because I had to go to my girlfriend's and spend the rest of the night alone.  Macy's Day Parade quickly became a song of interest, as the only reason Wal-mart wouldn't let me go was because they needed me for black Friday - and holy fuck, that sucked ass.  It was pretty depressing, and Green Day knew exactly how I felt about it...  So I indulged.  It was after that that I REALLY realized that I was in the belly of the beast, working for a company that I utterly despised.  "I got the company car," and "I'm one with the ones that I've never believed in."  Seemed relevant enough.  The snapping point was when I asked off the week I needed for Christmas, and got, again, two days off.  Fuck that!  I've got a life and a family outside of work, and Wal-mart can suck my crusty ass!  I was now planning on putting in my two weeks notice soon.

Finals were just around the corner, and my grades were below par - I hear that's a common thing for the first-year, but it was still pretty depressing, so songs like Missed the Boat and Dumb were pretty fitting.  In fact, after I bombed a history test and I knew it, I walked out of the room, put in my headphones, and played Dumb as I walked back to my car.  "I'm not like them, I can pretend...  I think I'm dumb, maybe just happy."  Turned out, I was now on probation, and I spent the whole of Christmas break hiding that fact from my dad.  When he finally found out when we got home, he lashed out and I had my first real college breakdown.  That, and all of the events leading up to it - including having to work at Wal-mart for the bulk of December, causing me to feel utterly depressed - caused me to, in a weird way, connect to the song New Heart for Christmas.  Even though I got to see my family, it was by far my most depressing holiday season I've ever encountered.

Stay tuned!

This is pretty great!  It's called the Golden Age of Video, and it's a music video mashup of various movies and TV shows.  Check it out!

Because I'm THAT bored and out of actual topics.

I guess, technically, this is my temporary room, but I've still fixed it up like it's mine.  This is in my girlfriend's house, and I haven't "officially" moved in yet, but we're working on that...

And yes, it's messy.  I'm a boy.  Get over it!  :-p













Lot's of freakin' mirrors.






I'm oldskool like that!


Music stuff!!

It's a well known fact that putting the word "Xanga" in your title is a sure fire way to get quite a few views.  However, that's not why I'm writing this post.  I'm not writing this to bitch about Xanga, but rather to bitch about people who bitch about Xanga, because it's been thoroughly getting on my nerves lately.

My theory is that people just want something to bitch about.  If they run out of things, they'll find something new.  It's not like that's any super secret ideal or anything, a lot of people believe that.  I mean, look at me...  I've ran out of actual topics, so what am I going to do?  Bitch, of coarse.

Just recently, I lost a Xanga "friend" because I disagreed on a topic that, I, myself, find to be extremely trivial, and frankly get tired of hearing people whine and moan about;  Autoplay.  The person (not naming names, but you might have seen the post) made the statement that you should either disable it or just delete your Xanga account, and their reasoning was that just because you like a certain song doesn't mean that everyone else wants to hear it.  I understand that, but my thing is it's my goddamned site, I'll do whatever I want with it.  So I made a snappy remark about how since I don't particularly like the background image that this Xangan had chosen, they should probably delete their Xanga because just because they liked it didn't mean that I would, and further that if you don't like it, then don't view it.  Then they just whined and bitched about bloggers who get featured and have it enabled, and proceeded to block me for what I said.  True, I said what I said with vulgar language, but...  I figured it was alright, because the original post itself was a big mess of F-bombs anyway, so I just kind of mimicked it.  It in no way indicated, however, that I no longer wished to be Xanga friends because of the disagreement.  Whatever.  Not my loss, the way I see it.

Anyway, folks...  Here's the deal with autoplay;  Get the fuck over it and look for something better to bawl about...  Seriously.  Sometimes I worry about this generation, being so fucking lazy and easily offended that they can't scroll to the bottom of a page and click a button, so they resort to using that extra effort to instead make a huge fucking deal out of something so minor.  "Waaaah!  I don't like your music!  Waaah!!!  Waaah!!!"  Yes, autoplay does get in my way from time to time, but you know what I do?  I TURN IT OFF AND MOVE ON.  It takes like two seconds, literally...  And like I said before, it's their damned site, anyway...  Who am I to tell them what they can and can't put on it?

My stance is, do with your site what you want with it.  I have plenty of friends who use autoplay, and I've even found some people with similar tastes in music because of it.  Nothing wrong with that, IMO.  When I don't want to hear it, it's seriously an easy fix.

Fun Fact:  Did you know that, way back in Xanga's earlier days, you could put a URL to a song on the Internet straight into your profile, so that it ALWAYS played no matter what, and you COULDN'T actually turn it off?  Yeah...  And you think you have it bad now.  Most of you would be shitting bricks!  Be thankful that things have changed and we now use Autoplay boxes that can at least be stopped with a little effort.

And in other (hilarious) news, the person that I'm referencing in this post apparently totally cut off all commenting on their site, because of the assholes that come on Xanga and leave fucking annoying comments.  I guess they can't take it when people disagree with them, and disagreement is considered as annoying to them.  How fucking immature and retarded...  Grow up.  I mean seriously...  Your post was ASKING for controversy!  You were cussing up a storm and telling people to delete their sites if they weren't exactly how YOU liked them to be...  Dumbass. 



Awww, I'm sowwie...  Did I hurt your wittle fee-wings?

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE THESE DAYS!?!?

Okay, so I'm stealing this from Kieri126 because I'm all out of originality today and really, really want to post some more.  Besides, I practically already did this in her comment section, lol, so I might as well make it an actual post!

So,

You know what really grinds my gears???




When someone can't sit through a one hour class without touching their phone (usually an iPhone - go figure).

Seriously?  It's just for an hour...  I think you'll survive.  And I really could care less that you spent way the fuck too much for a phone.  "Ooh, look at me, I'm on the Internet in class!"  Yeah, well, hope that helps come test time...

When someone can't have a face to face conversation with you without touching their phone (again, usually an iPhone).

This one's even worse than the last one.  I'm not typically old fashioned, but this is just rude!  So now your expensive phone is more interesting than me?  Well I feel special...

When parents can't/don't/won't control their kids in public.

You've all been there; the crying kid in the restaurant, the annoying kids that parade around the store and throw shit at you while their parents are doing fuck knows what somewhere else in the store.  Your kids are YOUR problem, don't let them become mine or you (and they) will regret it!

When parents, usually trailer trash, let their young children play outside unattended - half naked, in trailer trash tradition.

Regrettably, I've seen this way too many times...  Kids, riding their trikes, hitting baseballs, playing in the street - and with a very minimal amount of clothes on, and no parental figure in sight.  Really?

In general, when parents just shouldn't be parents in the first place. 

See above two points.

When people insist on walking in the 1/10th of sidewalk space dedicated for bicyclists.

Hey.  See that white symbol on the ground of a guy riding a bike?  And see the white lines you're standing in?  Put two and two together...  At least now I have an excuse to hit you.

When people say "seen" instead of "saw."

No matter how smart you are or you appear to be, you sound like an idiotic hick every time you say it.  It's "I saw him at the grocery store," not "I SEEN him at the grocery store."  Ugh, I feel nasty just using it in an example.  *shutters*  Please stop it.

When people walk in groups and take up the whole sidewalk, and I am walking faster than you or riding my bike.

Yeah, we're the cool kids on campus, so who cares whether or not you can get past us?  We think we're the only ones who need a sidewalk, anyway, so screw you!

When people assume that the first person who answers the phone at tech support must have all the answers.

I'm the clerical, not a technician.  I take the information and match you up with the appropriate tech - I probably can't help you with your problem, and it's not my fault if no one is here at the moment.  Please, sir, stop yelling at me.  *CLICK*

When people try to adopt a pet thinking that the only money they'll ever have to spend on it is for food.

Um, okay, seriously...  It will need shots every year, it will need toys, it will need a place to stay...  Why are you looking at me like that?  Yes, it needs shots so that it won't get dangerous diseases and spread them to your other animals, it will need toys to exercise, and it needs a roof over it's head, just like you do...  Yeah, okay, I'm sorry...  You're not getting me.  Could I interest you in a giga-pet?  I think I still have mine from 5th grade, maybe that will keep you occupied.

When men refuse to neuter their dogs for the sole reason that they think it strips them of their masculinity.

I really doubt that your dog is thinking "YEAH!  GET SOME!  I'M 'A HIT THE BARS AND FUCK SOME CHICKS TONIGHT, MUTHAFUCKAS!  LOOK AT THESE BIG LUG-NUTS!"  In fact, I can pretty much assure you that they could probably care less.  Unless you're a breeder and/or are actually planning on having puppies, just do it...  Generations of unwanted pets will thank you, and everyone else will thank you for not having to look at nasty, hairy, dog balls.

People who drive big-ass trucks and don't know how to park them.

The fact that 80% of you are actually college students who will NEVER actually need a truck of that size in the first place is bad enough...  But fucking seriously, at least learn how to park it if you're going to insist on driving such a beast.  Here's a hint:  It goes BETWEEN the lines.  Not through them, not diagonally, and not across, but BETWEEN.

When people who drive big-ass trucks speed because the cops are more lenient towards people who look like they might be farmers (which is sadly true around here).

Your overly and unnecessarily huge ride is dangerous enough as it is; driving like a jackass only makes you a danger to society.  Think about it; if you hit, say, a motorcyclist, they're more than likely dead, and you get to live with that.  Stay safe...

Mac users with superiority complexes.

These people don't skip a beat.  ANY minuscule mention of a PC acting up, and they're on the prowl with their "Well, should have gone with Mac like I did!  Then you wouldn't have those problems."  Dude, the battery died...  Shut the fuck up.  Please.

That's all I've got for now...  I might add more as I think of them.

I am now back to posting as usual, after spending the last four days on the 'comment for a comment' post.  Yes, I realize that I *still* haven't gotten to everyone...  But I will, I promise.  I've been extra busy and have experienced a few road blocks.

---

I mentioned before that I started this site to be void of all religious debate, and then ended up making religion one of my biggest topics - it's inescapable; I was a Christian, and then I 'converted' and I needed a new place to blog about everything where nobody knew who I was (or at least didn't think they did).  It was successful.  This has by and large been my most successful Xanga site to date.  I've had probably about five including this one, two of which accounted for practically nothing as they were just projects, and the other two were insignificant at best, but still there.  This one, however, I managed to get to a point that I'm happy with and I am pretty sure I will be sticking with - but, then again, I was pretty sure about the same thing with one of the other sites I had.  No, I'm not going to come clean about who I was, because it doesn't really matter and you probably never heard of me anyway.

Anyway...  The thing is, I created this site at the end of my Christianity, so I was a Christian for a very short amount of time during it's existence - the majority of the time, I've been bloggin here as an Agnostic.  I didn't originally create this blog for that purpose, but that's what it molded into eventually.

But now, I'm once again starting to have some questions about my orientation with religion, one of the key questions being "am I really Agnostic, or am I full fledged Atheist?"  I've done some asking around about what each term actually means, and it really seems to be a matter of semantics - nothing more, nothing less.

See, some Atheists are under the impression that Agnostics are just Atheists that don't have the balls to actually call themselves Atheists (simply type the words "Agnostics are" into Google and see how Google auto-completes the sentence).  Why wouldn't someone want to identify with Atheism?  Good question.  For one, in this country, the name has been demonized beyond all belief.  People tend to be of the belief that as long as you believe in SOMETHING, you're better than an Atheist - so by that logic, even Satanists and terrorists have better standing in America than Atheists - wouldn't that be sad? (I talked a little more about that in this post about Bryan the dog from Family Guy being an Atheist - It's my most commented post to date.  Check it out).

So anyway, the question remains...  What is the difference between an Atheist and an Agnostic?  MY line of thinking was that, being a Christian, I didn't really want to totally abandon the belief in a God...  But, then again, I wasn't sure if I still believed there was one.  Because of this feeling, I deemed myself Agnostic and tend to believe that if there is a God, it is likely not the one(s) demonstrated in any of the Abrahamic religions, and likely didn't reveal Himself at all - by becoming human and/or inspiring scripture or any of that mess.  That's what I believe.  Some people think that you can believe this and be Atheist, while others seem to think that, to be an Atheist, you must believe that there is positively no God, and...  I just can't rightfully do that - it makes no sense to me, and is pretty much why I left Christianity - I don't believe you can be 100% certain about something like that, and shouldn't be expected to.

So what am I?  Agnostic? Atheist? or just not ballsy enough to identify with Atheism?

This video is pretty great...

I have a flagrant disregard for Xanga contests.  With talk of the next "Miss XangAmerica" contest floating around, I figured this would be a good time to post about this.  The reason I hate Xanga contests is because it seems that no matter what these contests are 'disguised' as, they almost always turn into popularity contests, whether they were intended to be or not.  It doesn't matter what the topic is; blogging, photography, beauty, hotness, "XangAmerica..."  Unless there is anonymity involved, it pretty much always ends up being about the person who has the biggest following stealing all of the votes. 

Likewise, while these contests are taking place, bloggers digress from actual blogging and spend countless hours, day and night, doing nothing but advertising, advertising, and more advertising so that their followers will vote for them.  You guys may not realize this, but when all I see for days on end are pulses asking for my vote and posts about how great you are and why you should win the contest...  I start wanting to blow my everloving brains out!  Not to mention that said posts are often timestamped about every five minutes to make sure that EVERYONE ON XANGA sees them.  Hey, I timestamp...  But the lengths that you contestants will go are out-fucking-rageous!  And also, anytime someone has to ASK me - or worse, BRIBE me to vote for them, that's pretty much a clear indicator that this is more about popularity than anything else.  And for the record, I don't vote for anyone who asks me to unless it is for something that's actually meaningful, so...  One sure-fire way to be sure that you won't be getting my vote is to ask me to vote for you.

The only contests I've ever actually took part in here on Xanga were photography contests, back when Cre13 did them.  The first one I entered - the theme was love, I believe - really pissed me off.  Not because I didn't win, but because I felt like there was way too much bribing, time-stamping, and vote recommendations amongst the more popular Xangans, making it less of a photography contest and more of a "let's see who has the most followers to persuade to vote for them" contest.  I even saw one Xangan vote for theirself, even though it was explicitly against the rules to do so.  That, even, seemed really shitty and conceited to me.

Really, I could care less that I lost; my entry was a picture that was taken with a less than professional camera that I doctored up at the last minute to enter the contest - I didn't expect much praise.  The simple fact that popularity took over what should have been a legitimate contest is what made me angry; I at least wanted to feel like I had a fair chance.

That being said, I took the suggestion of an anonymous photo contest to Cre13, and she agreed that it was a good idea and decided to go through with the contest, which I also entered (I suspect that I wasn't the only one who felt the same way and took this particular issue to her).  Although I lost that contest as well, I felt a lot better about its results because everyone voted on their favorite picture, and not for their favorite Xangan; it was truely a contest.

I know contests can be fun, and in a setting like this, it's just darned near impossible to have a completely fair contest - I understand that completely.  I honestly have nothing against Xanga popularity, because it's completely unavoidable...  Sometimes, though, I just kind of wish we could make efforts to exploit fresh, new faces instead of over-doing it with the Xangans that everyone ALREADY knows about.  Just my opinion.

How do you feel about Xanga contests?