What's On Your Radio?

Elton John began it. Sort of. Waaay back in the 80s when some of us weren’t even toddling about, due to our severe lack of existence, he’d already noticed and drawn attention to the fact that “Sad Songs Say So Much” (in an extremely alliteratively magnificent way too). The Living End seems to have taken note of it too.

With the advent of ipods and all those other personal music devices that Microsoft Word doesn’t passively aggressively put as “misspelled” with an angry red squiggle line under it, we can now be around music of our choosing virtually twenty-four hour a day if we so wish. This shift away from shared to private music listenage, though somewhat subtle, has happened extraordinarily rapidly.

In 2000, Glenelg-Seymour bus travel meant 107.1 SAFM blaring from a black cassette/radio player which had its very own seat. Within weeks, newbies would be well equipt to handle high pressure radiodical situations; swinging towards the hills, the station would cease working, giving the nearest person mere seconds to switch to the other SAFM frequency before the passengers started suffering music-and-inane-breakfast-show withdrawal symptoms.

Time passed, and with it came a new bus, with new, inbuilt radio (with a penchant for Nova) and, ever so sneakily: Discmans. Albeit, for choice you did need to bring the bulk of your CD collection, but the difference was now you didn’t need to share, or depend on what everyone else was listening to.

Now we have MP3 players and other headphonated devices. Now I am by no means saying that this is a bad thing; merely that it is heralding a shift that inevitably will, or indeed is already affecting our society, again, not necessarily in a bad way.

Simply, now if we need to escape from people, places, or even our own thoughts, its easy to retreat into a world where you hear nothing but the voice of someone, who chances are, you’ve never met speaking words that seem so relevant to what you’re feeling, whether that be happy, sad or confused.

I realise this isn’t a new thing. Maybe back in his day, when feeling a bit down, 18th Century Teenage boy indulged himself in a bit of ‘Marriage of Figaro’ to cheer up. There’s so much variety of music around, that no matter what’s going on, there will always be one that’s lyrics speak to you as if talking about your own life, day or problems. This is what the Elton John thing was about – sad songs say so much. As do happy songs, and random “Numa Numa” type songs (albeit in Romanian for that particular case).

Music is important, and not merely for entertainment. They have it in movies almost constantly to heighten what you’re seeing on screen, as it is extremely emotive. Even before the silver screen, music played a lead role in plays, stage-shows, circuses – almost every form of entertainment imaginable.

Now however, we are almost elbow deep in it. You hear something you like, not only can you immediately “acquire” it (and about twenty other songs by the same artist) you can listen to it straight away on your computer, copy it onto your music player and take it with you wherever you go; something not possible when all we had was CDs and Cassettes – unless of course you fancied toting a disc wallet around. It’s gotten too easy.

I’m not entirely clear on what my point is exactly. It’s not like “oooh! Watch out for that Billy Idol – he’s a bad influence talking into your ear all the time about “White Weddings” or that Eskimo Joe’s going to convince us all that the only cool girls are those with “Black Fingernails, Red Wine”…or something like that. Nor that Robbie Williams is telling us all to release “the hooligan half of me who steals from Woolworths.” (yes, that is one of his lyrics…)

The girl on the bus who’s at a loss at what to do because her ipod’s run out of battery, or the hooded boy charging through Rundle Mall not hearing the people around him…maybe I’m just slightly unsettled by the possibility that our generation could be the first to completely rely on self-therapy and become increasingly detached, because now we can be alone in a group, if we so choose. Already, what percentage of conversations we all have involve actual voices and talking, and isn’t all text and emoticons?

But, like I said, it’s just a possibility; things could go entirely the other way. Whatever the case, it’s not something that’s going to (or needs to) change anytime soon.

I mean, this whole thing was written while I was logged into msn, with music playing resoundingly loudly in the foreground :-p

Charmed Life

I always wondered what happened to the rest of the world when Piper from ‘Charmed’ froze a big city block full of people. Were the boundaries of freezedness, something like 100 square metres of frozen goodness, beyond which lay people hovering around the edges wondering why their friend had ceased moving mid-coffee sip? Or did the whole world freeze, thus making all the non-frozen people age, while the space-time continuum was ripped to shreds, as no time passes while the world is frozen, and yet The Charmed Ones could go about their daily business in what in actuality is no-time?

Bringing this back on topic, what I’m trying to say is that these few fun filled weeks of examinationy goodness feels a bit like that, where Year 12s as a group are The Charmed Ones, and everyone else is either frozen or evil.

Civilians, and civilian activities grind to a halt as we are stuck in lock-down, scrying for knowledge. Thunder thunders and lightning lightens; the downpour of rain pours downwards. Or, sometimes diagonally. Just general ominous-ness ensues. Escape is possible through slumber…that is if you want to escape into dark, frightening dreams. About camping. And driving Jeeps. And wearing Wellington boots due to the high muddability factor. Of camping.

From here the ominysity of it all disintegrates. Sleep is banish-ed (said in a Shakespearean way) to tomorrow, as the haunting words “Yo tell me what you want, what you really really want, I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want” resonate around the room. Downstairs is stumbled upon, outside is looked at, whereupon the discovery is made…Rock and Roll festival. Complete with skirt swishedness galore (I may have written about this last year, or at least the suspicious aftermath, where there was a frighteningly organised looking convergence of orange bins left in the wake of those who roll rocks in the musical sense.)

Anyways, the analogy continues, as, like in Charmed, we only leave the house to fight evil. Or do exams. Whichever.

Which is what I’m going to be doing tomorrow, so I must dash.

/.

There. All good.

Fascinating…for years what I thought was “A boh shu kuh! Mmmmhhhmmm” turned out to be “Come on sugar, Mmmmhhhmmm”…or "I'm all shook up, Mmmmhhhmmm"...I really have no idea. yay Elvis.

Red Green Blue Violet

Today many Year 12s took the metaphorical plunge into Exam Week. Not me though. I had to be literal.

With phone in hand, messagerial intentions at heart, and eyes apparently left somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, the last two stairs were wrongly written off as negligible and I found myself, somewhat over-exuberantly saying good morning to the carpet.

Now armed with two grazed knees (one carpet-burned and the other brick-burned), a fruit smoothie, a bottle of water, a mug of tea, and 2.5 cm (or 0.025 in correct units) worth of Physics textbook, the day was supposedly getting back on track, and steering away from loopiness like a electron away from the positive plate (hey, I said nothing about staying away from minor nerdiness).

After a swiss cheese hour, the holes being calls from Myer, the arrival of registered mail, and more tea gettage, my mind was happily losing its grasp on normality, so that when I put my hands behind my head and felt two random bumps at the base of my skull that hurt when pressed, the logical conclusion was a valiant escape attempt by my brain.

…anyways, I’m losing focus because the BEST scene in Beauty and the Beast’s coming up (No one fights like Gaston – have always been fascinated by him eating 3 dozen eggles complete with shells! ) so I’ll conclude, in a coherent, and very predictable way:

Gaston looks like the Scorpion King.

PG - "Phrasing Genius"

Shield your eyes! Block your ears! Wrap yourself in cotton wool! If you haven’t got a parent or suitable adult near you, find one now!

This is the kind of commotion a PG rating should inspire, but, alas, it seems that we are all becoming somewhat apathetic towards this would-be intimidating warning. Now, it’s not all the “Mild Coarse Language” that should be of concern (though ‘damn’ and 'blimey’ should be avoided at all costs.) No, indeed it isn’t even the ‘Medium Level Violence’ (The G rated Tom and Jerry anyone?). Nor is it the -dare I say it- ‘Sexual References’ (which, is kind of a sexual reference in itself, AND is printed on the front of the box)…no, we need to be protected from the real enemy…films containing ‘Supernatural Themes,’ ‘Sensuality,’ and ‘Teen Dating’. (not a joke – “The Sleepover" [which I certainly didn’t watch] was seriously rated PG because it contained Teen Dating and Sensuality…far worse than when the protagonist hid in the shower perving on a guy getting unchanged then stealing his boxer shorts…)

How DARE they fill our minds with such filth? It is time that we cracked down on films promoting such extraordinarily terrible ideals. Here’s the really disturbing part though; some films in this category are even rated G!!!

Some offenders are as follows:

Cinderella: This young, teenage girl, with the help of a Supernatural being (claiming to be her ‘Fairy Godmother’) deliberately disobeys the wishes of her parental figure and struts into a royal Ball, where Teen Dating ensues…not only this, she enjoys singing, and talking to mice, thinking that they talk back to her (indicating possible drug use).

The Little Mermaid: She’s a teenage mermaid. She dates a PRINCE. She gads about with talking sea creatures. Her worst enemy is half octopus, half purple. She is passionate about the out-of-sea world. Supernatural, Teen Dating and Sensuality. Despicable.

Winnie the Pooh: They’re all a bunch of playroom toys come to life. Supernatural. They do however get a tick in their box from refraining from teenage dating and sensuality, so children might possibly be allowed to watch this one…provided they sit in a big, empty room afterwards to counteract any boosts in imagination and/or mental stimulation.

Hmm, anyways, I don’t have time to start on Pocahontas or Noddy. Yes, I get that ratings are important…maybe they just need to phrase things better.