Coffee and Code

Wow - I just noticed a huge typo on my last post (re: Mind Mapping). Just goes to show how scattered I've been lately. It's all good though - I tend to get a little flaky when I'm deep into a project, as is the current case.

Paris Hilton is back in jail, and that makes me happy. It's not that I hate her personally or anything, but let's face it - she gets off easy because of who she is, and that's wrong. She IS spoiled. I know it sounds a little mean, but - I downloaded a pic of Paris Hilton with sobby-face in the back seat of a squad car. I'm going to keep the image to use as a pick-me-up when I feel down. I'm serious. Sorry, Paris.

I read this article on CNN.com the other day, and it really pissed me off.

To paraphrase the article, apparently talent is just not enough for women to be successful as entertainers - now, they have to be "sexy" too. A music industry executive (a woman, no less) is quoted in the article as saying:

"The music is not about just music anymore, it's about the look, the 'it' factor if you will ... it's marketing."

Is there anything more harmful music than to put more stock in how a musician looks than how he or she sounds? I don't think so. For one thing, professional musicians now must have to devote time and energy to maintaining their "perfect" physiques, which could only eat into the creative process. Should a talented musician have to endure withering comments from fashion critics? Should an extremely talented musician lose out on a recording contract because they just didn't have this year's 'it' look?

To hell with the record industry, the beautiful people, and those that support them. They are the Great and Shallow, and their legacy will be the corrosion of the musical arts in America.

They can keep their shitty Pussycat Dolls, and American Idols, and blonde, brainless lip-synchers galore. I don't want any.

They can keep their lame, quasi-sensitive poor excuses for rockers, too. Those guys aren't fooling anyone (with a brain anyway). Weakness!

Music can change lives. It's capable of awakening and inspiring people. If the trend of valuing phyiscal beauty and style above talent continues, however, music will cease to be a powerful force in our lives.

It's up to us, as consumers, to demand substance and to ignore fluff. So turn off American Idol or whatever, and crank some REAL MUSIC!!

Now, I'm not someone to normally write about Britney Spears. I would usually much rather keep Britney, as well as numerous other purveyors of fluffy american pap music (er.... I mean pop music) as far from my thoughts as possible.

After seeing the flap this morning about Britney's newly-shorn noggin, however, I just have to put my 2 cents in. And those 2 cents are:

1. It looks like Britney was going for the Sinead O'Connor look, but it ended up making her look like the guy in that Powder movie.

2. She also looks a bit like Cancer Boy from Kids in the Hall, or perhaps like the lead singer of Smashing Pumpkins.

I'm expecting the media to begin speculating immediately that a combination of paparrazzi (spelling?) harrassment, the influence of Paris Hilton, and repressed memories of being brainwashed by the Disney Mouseketeer entertainment/child assassin juggernaut to kill foreign dignitaries and encourage other American children to abandon their ideas of living lives of substance in favor of subscribing to Disney's twisted vision of filthy children waiting in long lines with fingers up noses waiting for the next gut-churning ride on the spinning teacup, followed by a quick photo session with Goofy.

Thus ends this Saturday-morning rant. Awww, poor Britney.

Quick side note, though: What if Britney's recent decline is due to a Cruel Intentions-style plot between Paris Hilton and Justin Timberlake? You know what I'm talkin' about... just saying.