1) It is impossible to listen to The Idle Race and be unhappy as a result.
I didn’t think it would be possible to like a band after only hearing one song, but, well, I’m shallow. And ‘Days Of The Broken Arrows’ is EPIC. Srsly.

It’s partly the music. It’s just so… freakishly awesome. And happy! Yay for psychedelic rock. XD But yes. Also, /random fangirl moment/ Jeff Lynne’s voice is sosososo prettiful! /sanity restored. …I might be slightly in love with his falsetto at the moment. >.>

Though I still adore them post-Jeff as well. Very prettiful music, considering it’s ~40 years old. <3 *watches music collection age a decade* XD ‘By The Sun’ is epic and prettyful and I luffs it so. <3
2) People are morons.
I know, I know, I knew this already, but seriously. People are too easily offended. And if you go looking to be offended and find yourself offended, then it’s no one’s fault but your own.

Seriously. When did we become so up ourselves as a nation? When did we lose the ability to laugh at ourselves?

*sighs*

I don’t know. I suppose I’ve reached the point at which any outrage about The Chaser is one too many. Then again, this is the same country who were obsessed with Utegate for over a week.

3) You can never stop playing Tetris.
No, really, you can’t. No matter how hard you try, once it’s sucked you in, you’ll never be free of it. I’m beginning to believe it’s unbeatable just to keep you playing for eternity. D:

…Did you guess I’ve been playing a lot of NES!Tetris lately? XD

I have been playing Tetris on various formats/consoles for *thinks* 14 years? I started on my brother’s old black and white GameBoy. I was away on holiday, playing it, and I almost beat it. Since then, I have wanted to beat it, just once, so I can put this addiction to rest. Alas, I have no conquered level nine yet. D:

One day, people! One day! D:!

4) Stephen McDonell is my new hero
*swoons*

The Eyebrow Man is ABC’s China Correspondent, and really quite kickarsedly awesome. I’ve always had a lot of respect for foreign correspondents, Sally Sara being a particular favourite. I don’t envy the job they do, even as it needs to be done.

But why is Stephen so awesome? Well, I do love that he speaks mandarin, and you really can tell he has a great respect for the culture in which he’s working, and a passion for his job. I might tease him for his errant eyebrows and his awesome wardrobe, but really, he’s completely awesome.

I remember seeing a doco series on foreign correspondents and how they cope with what they see and experience. Sally Sara was on that and oh, man, I may have kinda fell for her. >.> *seems to have a thing for ABC journos*

5) It helps to actually have five things to write in here before beginning.
I thought I had five, and then I kinda forgot the rest. Should I do this again (due to lack of other ideas), I’ll remember to plan it out before hand.

Perhaps I’ll do them every week anyway, in case I fail at thinking of some deep and meaningful topic to bitch about for 600 odd words.

And on that note, since I am tired and in need of sleep (when I finish listening to moar Idle Race), I might finish this semi-successful attempt at blog content. Huzzah! XD

I don’t know, when I look back at my life, so much of it has been shaped by the presence of music. As much as I like my quiet time, I think I would go spare without music.

At the moment, triple j are counting down their Hottest 100 Of All Time (which I dutifully voted in). And, you know what? Save from Jeff Buckley, Kings of Leon, and Coldplay, I actually don’t mind most of what’s been chosen. I’m rather enjoying it, actually. Probably would’ve voted for some of them, if I’d thought of them at the time.

(As an aside, sure, I’m not a Michael Jackson fan, but I will admit to being somewhat partial to Thriller and Bad, and Thriller got in, so awesome. )
I suppose part of it is because triple j and rage have been part of my life for nearly a decade, and the kind of music they play has morphed and inspired the sort of music I like. They’ve shaped my music taste in a way nothing else has. A lot of these songs I remember from rage guest programmers. Others I remember from my teen years.

A list like this is always going to be subjective, people will always disagree, because music taste is a very personal thing. I think what it reflects most is the triple j audience themselves. And sure, just cos I like a lot of old music, I don’t necessarily think age makes a song better or more brilliant than a younger one. Not all old rock was brilliant. There was plenty of shit then, just as there’s plenty of shit now, and I think this will always be the case while the music industry still mostly cares about making money than decent quality music.

And while it might be noble to say the whole illegal music downloading shit is Gen Y being radical and hardcore and sticking it to the man, I don’t think that’s even a thought Gen Y considers when ripping songs off youtube, downloading leaked albums and discographies and other things. I think, at the heart of it, for a generation weaned on the internet, that they merely like getting shit for free, like every other human being on the planet, and if any technology is capable of feeding their habit, it’s the internet.

I’m one of those people who’s not really Gen X or Y. My parents were babyboomers, barely, so technically I’m Gen X, but I also share a lot of characteristics with Gen Y, and I’ve grown up a digital native. I would also challenge the notion that all of Gen Y are computer/internet savvy. I don’t think this is a fair generalisation. Those who are interested in computers and the net enough will be computer literate digital natives. Merely being born in that generation doesn’t mean you’re an instant digital native; you have to actually interact with the technology, grow up with it and use it for that to happen.

But I digress. (An expedition to wiki informs me I’m part of the MTV generation. In spite of never watching MTV evar. XD Then again, depending on which definition you use, I’m either Gen X or Y, so… XD)

I had a thought earlier in the week. How many of the groups around now will still be performing and touring thirty years from now? Forty years from now? Do Gen Y have a different attitude to music? Is it not so much a career thing? Or is that more to do with the increased fickleness of the industry and actually making it? That it’s actually much harder to sustain success now than it used to be?

I suppose any list documenting notable bands worthy of eternal praise and devotion is going to be different for everyone. Because at the end of the day, music is a very personal thing, and what I love and adore and has shaped my life is not the same as someone else’s. Just because I don’t get how apparently brilliant Jeff Buckley was doesn’t mean I am somehow deficient in being able to pick good music. Then again, I adore trashy 80s music and obscure 70s rock, so who am I to complain?

If SBS is only good for one thing, it’s triggering my brain and making me thing about shit. As well as my awesome LJ friends. Love your work, guys.

What started my thoughts was a friend writing about her sexuality, and mentioning that she thinks she’d be better suited as a gay male. Amongst the comments were a couple of other people airing the same view. This combined with my own gender issues got me thinking about why it is that I hear more and more females expressing this view that they’d rather be gay men.

I’m not offering anything but my opinions and musings here on something I keep seeing all over the net. I’m sure others have attempted to explain this phenomenon in much better ways than I plan to, but that’s not what this is about.

I know of the phenomenon in yaoi fandoms, where yaoi fangirls express their desire to be (gay) men. As someone not involved in yaoi at all, I don’t know of this firsthand, so I may be getting biased information. I have heard scorn heaped upon them, that they’re only wanting to be (gay) men because they’re obsessed with their lust objects, or some other delusional idea. I don’t know. Yaoi is out of my league. Anyone saying that fandom helped them realise their gender and or sexuality is usually ridiculed.

But I keep seeing it. Females saying they’d be better off as gay males. Why?

Have they such a warped view of femininity and femaleness that what would normally be seen as merely variance in female expression is seen as not female enough and therefore they must be more male, and that gay males are seen as femme and male, in some form of warped androgyne?

I know this may seem ironic coming from a female bodied human who would like to look more male, so in a sense you could call me biased. But I like thinking about these things, and I’ve spent a long time thinking about what exactly is male and female and why they are problematic for young people today.

I see both a wide scope and an incredibly narrow definition of what femininity is. In amongst the feminist mindset that female can be anything they want to be is a narrow definition that wishes girls to emphasise their femininity to the extreme, to be proud of being girls, and what role models are there in the media to show girls what they can be?

Beautiful women, obsessed with fashion, make up, boys, and all that jazz. So girls feel the need to follow suit for lack of any other image to base their femininity on. I see it emphasised in girls’ magazines, girls’ toys, everything geared for girls is designed with that same image in mind. No wonder girls are confused.

If they recognise they don’t fit that uber-female model, they are potentially not female enough. There’s no one to tell them that the uber-feminine is NOT the only expression of femininity, and that they’re actually quite normal human females.

Now, I realise this won’t be the case for some. For some, they are trans* and their reasons for feeling like a gay man will be completely different. Some will even ID as straight men. Some will ID as something else completely, like me.

But back to gay men. I’m not sure there’s one cause for this, but there is the stereotype of gay men as being effeminate and camp, even if this is not the case for many of them. It’s part of the taunting of gay men, that they’re not masculine enough. In high school, boys who aren’t seen as masculine enough are perceived as gay. Conversely, girls who are seen as strong and not interested in beauty are taunted as lesbians.

So there’s this use of perceived sexuality as a comment on gender. So in this way, the two concepts are linked because society sees gay men and lesbians as expressing a different version of masculinity and femininity than the heteronormative community.

It’s funny to see them interweaved like this. We like to see gender and sexuality as separate expressions, but they are linked together. Until we are more accepting of variants in gender, we’re going to have a hard time accepting gays, lesbians and others outside the heteronormative community.