I’m departing from the usual in this blog, and especially the tone of my most recent post (though perhaps recent isn’t the best word) to bring you something silly and fun. Silly and fun? you ask. Why yes, I am capable. I know it might be a surprise. So without further ado, here are ten things I would do if there were one, maybe two more hours in the day.

1. Exercise more: I’m trying to be more active, to do at least one physical thing each day. Mostly because I miss the way certain parts of my body used to look, no small bit because it’s rather embarrassing when I’m winded after two flights of stairs (and I NEVER take the elevator), but also because I spend way too much time sitting each day. With more time in each day I would go on more bike rides, go on more walks with my dogs, finally start an ab program that I stayed faithful to.

2. Learn more: It’s no secret right now that I’m learning French (I try to spend at least 15 minutes a day on it), but less well-known is the fact that I have a stack of old textbooks that I have every intention of reading. Sitting on my shelf right now I have books on chemistry, organic chemistry, biology, linguistics, feminist theory, and literature. And yeah, when I do find the time to pull one of those out, I do the exercises.

3. Bake more: I love to bake, especially bread. And not with a bread machine either. No, you’ve got to get your hands in there. It’s the physical connection, the smell—the absolutely yummy food you get to eat. I can’t even think of the last thing I baked, though. Maybe those ginger molasses cookies at Christmas?

4. Play more video games: I really try to make an effort to not spend too much time in front of the television—TV doesn’t interest me all that much unless it’s the Food Network—but I do have a soft spot for certain video games. But right now I do limit my time rather severely. Plus—and this has nothing to do with how much time there is or isn’t in the day—my Xbox is broken right now.

5. Sleep more: I like to sleep, I do. But I also am not a fan of sleeping in until 11. I like to be up by 9:30 at the latest, but when I stay up reading until 4 a.m. some nights, I end up really tired the next day. I really do need my full eight hours.

6. Be more social: Sometimes I think my friends must think I don’t want to hang out with them, because I’m very good at being busy when they call. With more time I could better show them that, yes, I care.

7. Straighten my hair more: Okay, I know this one sounds silly, but I stopped straightening my hair regularly about the time I started graduate school. There were just other things that needed to be done—it felt silly to spend half an hour with a straightening iron in front of the bathroom mirror. But—call me vain—I really do love having straight hair.

8. Spend more time on forgotten or new hobbies: I’m really, really good at filling my time. And there are so many things in life I wish I could try, could be good at. Take my guitar playing. It was a hobby for a few years, but now I hardly ever touch it. And I’d really like to finish that one cross stitch piece I started four or so years ago. And I’d really like to learn more about history. And I wish I knew how to use Flash. I wish I could identify the birds that come to our bird feeder without looking in the book. There’s so much knowledge out there, and I really do want it pretty much all of it.

9. Read more: I have so many books that I want to read, and yet I don’t often seem to have the time to really dive in to books. Oh, I read pretty much daily, and I do spend some nights reading when I should be sleeping (see number 5), but I wish I had time enough that I am able to read faster than I buy books.

10. Write more: Too much lately this has been the first thing falling off my plate. I’ve got work, I want to write a book review, I try to stay networked, I’ve got errands to run, I’ve got to plan for that community ed class I want to teach in the fall… I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that. My family/friends want to spend time with me. The dog is lonely. I’ve got another darn migraine. And somehow, too much of my writing is being done in my head. Despite being number 10, this is the number one reason I’d like more time. Though I do worry that even with all the time in the world, I’d still find reasons (numbers 1-9 for starters) to put off writing.

But I’m working on it. I promise.

Lady Gaga’s Judas was leaked early, and I must say, I love it! The song is, to me, metaphorical, about loving the wrong man, about loving someone who hurts and betrays you, and all the conflicting emotions that exist in this type of situation. To be sure, the surface story of Mary Magdelene and Judas works for me as well, I just love that there’s more to it.

From my limited research (if you can call it that), however, I’m finding that there’s a lot of vitriol toward the song, and toward Lady Gaga in general. A radio station here in Orlando premiered it yesterday and then had people call in with their opinions—over half (at the time I was listening) didn’t like it. (Of course, Lady Gaga was performing in Orlando at that exact time, so I feel like the numbers were skewed against her.)

I’ve thought about this response since then, and all the public response after Born This Way was released. And I’ve decided: This has more to do with Lady Gaga than it does with the music.

Okay, stay with me.

We live in a culture that oftentimes pushes against success. We to see a moderate amount, not sensations. This is evidenced in the people that call musicians sellouts when their music finally breaks into mainstream play, by the people (some of whom I went to grad school with) that find popular literature unworthy of attention. This is the girl that told me, in all seriousness, that she would never read Harry Potter for the sole reason that everyone else liked it. This is why we love to see celebrities fall, fail, why these days Britney Spears makes a splash in the news when she screws up but only a ripple when she does well. And now, I believe, this phenomenon has come to Lady Gaga.

She has her fans, of course. Loyal fans. People who tell her—and mean it—that her messages of tolerance have saved their lives. But she has also caused a stir with some of her antics, and so there is a substantial group of people out there who believe she’s had enough attention (or too much) and that it’s time for her to be done. It seems to me like the people who will go out to vote against something but not for something—the voice of the opposition can be so much louder.

And some people really don’t like her music. That’s fine. No one is universally loved. What gets me, however, is the people who then say that she’s not talented, as if their taste alone defines talent. I can’t stand Katy Perry’s music, but you won’t ever catch me saying she doesn’t deserve her record deal.

Anyway, here’s the new song. Enjoy it, or don’t. I personally can’t wait for the whole album, and I wish Lady Gaga all the success in the world.

Lady Gaga’s latest single, Born This Way, came out a month or so ago. It’s the first track to be released from her upcoming album. Being the little monster that I am, I of course downloaded the song from iTunes the day it came out, happily handing over my $1.29 plus tax. A few days later I bought Avril Lavigne’s first single off of her upcoming album. (Are you noticing a trend related to my inability to practice patience?) These are both albums that I want to own and that I normally would have at least considered purchasing at the store and then transferred to my computer. Except now I’ve gone and put money essentially toward the strictly digital creation of the music. And since I’ve become a bit obsessive about saving money, it makes more sense for me to just use the awesome little Complete my Album option in iTunes.

Except I love album art. I do. I love it. I love looking through the entire design that goes into packaging a CD, from the liner notes to the back of the case to the font that’s used on the actual CD itself. That little image you get in iTunes, that shows up on your iPod—it’s cool and all, but I really like getting those extras in tangible form (plus, you usually get lyrics when you buy an actual CD). So that said, I’m thinking I might just go ahead and buy these albums at Best Buy or somewhere. There are worse things to pay for than art.

Check below the cut here to see some of my favorite album artwork, off the top of my head.Both of the Jack’s Mannequin CDs. I especially love how detailed they both are, despite being so different.

Some awesome albums, with awesome art.

Let Love In by the Goo Goo Dolls features just stunning art inside.

The cover art for Let Love In. Trust me when I say it only gets better inside.

Lady Gaga’s black and white series is just gorgeous.

Some of Lady Gaga's black and white art.

I went to a concert tonight at a local bar-slash-music-venue. It’s a band that got its start at the MSU Battle of the Bands and that I first (and last) saw perform seven years ago when I was a sophomore at Michigan State. It’s a band that I like, that has a female lead singer, that has non-offensive lyrics. So I went to see them tonight. I listened to three cover bands that did little to impress me (I’d say they did nothing to impress me, but one of the three bands actually had my attention for a little bit). And then the Real Band got on to play. My friend and I were in the middle of the crowd, not in the front but still close enough to see (somewhat).

Now first, let me emphasize, I went to see a rock band, but it’s sort of an indie rock band. It’s not hard rock, and it’s not punk, and it’s not metal. The group consists of guitar, keyboard, and drums (vocals by the keyboardist and guitarist).

So when they played the song that started them on their path to success, and a group of men next to me started a mosh pit, I was really quite at a loss. I was right at the outer edge of it, behind a man and his girlfriend who were trying to stay clear but kept getting slammed. I only got slightly jostled. But still. Five minutes later, a guy dove into the crowd to crowd surf. He was coming my direction, and I told myself I would not touch him.

I have a right to go to a concert, to listen to music, without risk of injury. I have a right to not have to decide between touching a strange man in a spot that makes me uncomfortable and having him dropped on my head. I have a right to go out in public without always having to watch my surroundings, having to listen in on all the conversations around me to make sure there isn’t something sinister going on. I have a right to stand somewhere without being groped (as happened a few months back in a bathroom, while I was washing my hands). I have a right to my personal space, to my autonomy, none of which (save for the lack of groping) I had tonight. My friend and I were on our own as the group of all men careened into one another, bodies crashing together, trying to do who-knows-what. We left a few minutes later. There was no enjoyment left in the evening.

So tell me: When did this become a man’s world? When did something as simple as listening to music become something so male-centric? When did personal safety become a privilege rather than a right? Why do I have to leave a concert that I paid for, why do I have to step back and away, giving up my space? Why aren’t we teaching men to respect the space of others? To notice those surrounding them? Why aren’t we teaching men that this world is inhabited by a wide scope of people, including women? When will we understand that respecting women is more than cheering for a female singer on stage, it’s more than opening doors, or refusing to wrestle a female opponent. Together we must recognize these spaces that have been so thoroughly claimed as male, and we must work to make them for everyone.

Photo by James Jordan | CC BY-ND 2.0

Today has been a hectic blog day. Somehow between last night and this morning the plugins folder disappeared from my blog and all my plugins, understandably, stopped working. That meant that until I realized what was going on and was able to log on and disable comments, I was getting all sorts of crazy spam. Things should be fixed now and I’ve added a few new plugins that I’m testing out.

Today’s post is something that’s been brewing in my mind for the past month or so and I figured since I blogged about music yesterday, today would be a good day to tackle yet another music post. My apologies if you were hoping for some variety. I’m just happy to have three posts in four days.

Owl City has a song out right now called Fireflies. Other than the strange Death Cab for Cutie sound (for shame impersonating one of my favorite bands!) I have to admit that I kind of like the song. I say kind of because while I find it catchy and usually will listen to it if it comes on the radio, I also think it’s kind of, well, bad. And the badness is in the lyrics.

In the spirit of a workshop, before I start criticizing, however, I want to point out one line I just love in the song. There’s this fantastic image about fireflies doing a foxtrot above the speaker’s (singer’s?) head that I just love, though the next image of a sockhop beneath the bed sort of ruins the whole thing for me. A sockhop just doesn’t paint a cool image. Or maybe it’s the under the bed part.

In either case, the main issue I take with the lyrics in this song is the way lines relate to one another. There needs to be cause and effect not just two lines that rhyme. For example, the lines “Leave my door open just a crack / ’cause I feel like such an insomniac.”

Huh?

I’m just not seeing the connection between insomnia and a door being open a crack. And the lines don’t even paint an image for me. It seems that the songwriter was more interested in rhythm and flow than actually making sense. You can get away with it in songs (apparently, since this song is a hit), but not in writing. Let’s look at another one.

“But I’ll know where several are / if my dreams get real bizarre / ’cause I saved a few and I keep them in a jar.”

Again, not seeing the connection between knowing where things are and bizarre dreams.

Finally, we have, “To ten million fireflies / I’m weird ’cause I hate goodbyes.” And I’m not buying it. I’m just not. I’d say the large majority of the population would find it weird if you loved goodbyes, not if you hated them. And even assuming, as the song seems to, that it’s the fireflies finding it weird, well, that’s not an image that I’m buying even within the context of this song. I don’t think of fireflies and transience, of making and then leaving different relationships.

So how does all this relate to writing? Well…you can’t do these things in fiction. Rhythm has to come second to the reader being able to track what’s actually going on (though you can certainly use heavy rhythm, even in fiction). Cause and effect relationships absolutely have to make sense–even if not in our actual world, within the world of your story. If it doesn’t, you’ve either made a mistake in understanding how things happen or you haven’t developed your world enough yet for your reader to make the jump with you. And you absolutely cannot make up your own interpretations of how a greater audience feels. If you’re going to tell me about big broad ideas, you had better back up your argument or hope most of your readers agree with you. But when the song tells me it’s weird to hate goodbyes? I call bullshit.

I love Third Eye Blind, and after a long hiatus, they released a new album, Ursa Major, in August of 2009. It’s not my favorite of their albums–I’d say that’s a toss up between Blue and Out of the Vein–but it does have one of my favorite songs of theirs: Don’t Believe a Word (which, incidentally, has a kick ass video of black and white stop motion photography).

I’ve got a habit of listening to songs on repeat until I know all the words, and I’ve probably listened to this song a hundred times (and I still can’t get all the words!), including yesterday in my car on the way home from work. And there’s this one line in the song that I just love–but that I feel sort of wrong for loving.The line goes “Give me back my photos will you? / You fucking whore I’ll kill you.” And I just love the way those last six words sound linguistically: all the soft sounds broken up by the two hard aspirations on the Ks.

Yes, it’s an ugly line–especially when I think about the cultural implications and stereotypes surrounding the word whore, but something about the way the letters sound on my tongue makes it a bit beautiful.

And this isn’t the only line of Third Eye Blind’s that I feel both ways about. The entire middle section of Semi-Charmed Life is often omitted from radio versions of the song yet it’s my favorite part, especially the strange image of a woman lying face down on a mattress. The song Slow Motion has numerous instance of the physical beauty in really ugly things such as the arc of a fist as a man beats up his wife, or the color of blood from a nose bleed after snorting coke. Jumper is the story of a gay high school student who committed suicide. Wounded is about a woman trying to move past a sexual assault.

But many people refuse to acknowledge any worth in something awful. I know a woman who will stop reading (and attempt to return) any book with profanity, regardless of the rest of the book. And I can almost understand the argument of not wanting to be exposed to these types of instances in art when they are already so prevalent in the real world, but in the end, I feel that art can help us understand these hard-to-face things, can get us talking about them, and help us recognize that they don’t just happen to “others.”

I’m not talking about darkness for the sake of shocking and I’m not saying that thing like beating up your wife become less horrific because of the beauty with which they can be talked about. I’m not advocating for movies like the Saw or Hostel movies that seem to glorify violence only in order to titillate. I’m not advocating for the promotion of senseless violence. But I do see a use, and in these Third Eye Blind songs I see more of a window into a world that too many people would rather pretend doesn’t exist. And by taking something horrific and turning it into something with a bit of beauty, it becomes easier to address.

I’ve been wanting to put together some thoughts on this song for quite some time now, ever since I heard it for the first time three or four months ago. I’m inclined to think I like it, though its mixed and problematic messages stop me pretty much every time I hear it. This is not an argument that the song should not exist, that it should not be listened to, or that Swift and her listeners are somehow stupid. It’s an exploration of the messages that could be pulled from the lyrics in the hope that this will inspire thought and discussion about those same issues. The lyrics can be found here and the music video, here.*

First, I want to address the most obviously problematic part of this song: The myth of the love story. This idea that love can be perfect (once two people overcome the obstacles and finally end up together) is not reality, though it is a commonly accepted myth in this world, even claiming an entire genre for itself in romance novels. Now, I’m not arguing that we should do away with everything that presents love in this sort of light–I’m not a fan of censorship–but I do believe we need to be aware of the impracticality of this belief.

Now Swift does not make explicit statements in her song about living happily ever after, but that idea hangs over the entire piece by repeating her title throughout the song. And I do not think that Swift needs to address this type of issue in her song (just as I do not believe a romance novel needs to), but the listener (and Swift herself) needs to be aware of the fantasy of such a reality.

Another problematic aspect of this song is the final verse. The girl in Swift’s song gets “tired of waiting” for her Romeo to “come around.” Her “faith in him” fades as she wonders when he will “come around.” When she does find him, she asks him to “save” her. Here she not only becomes a passive member in her own love story (which is especially odd since it seems a bit of a role reversal) but also an archetypal damsel in distress. She needs to be saved, but from what? The only problem that seems to occur in the song comes from her family’s (actually, father’s, but that’s an entire other issue) dislike of her Romeo. It’s unfortunate, but it hardly seems a dire situation from which she needs to be rescued.

Finally, there are the references to Romeo and Juliet and, once, to The Scarlet Letter. Here I’m going to mainly discuss how I feel these stories have been misinterpreted and/or distorted in order for Swift to tell her story. (Not that, as a writer, you cannot appropriate.) Romeo and Juliet was not a love story but rather a tragedy that developed out of love. They were not able to be together in the end (save through death, but I doubt Swift intends to send a message supportive of teen suicide). This misinterpretation seems to come–and this is something that really bothered one of my old roommates, so the credit all goes to Lauren–from a misunderstanding of the phrase star-crossed lovers. It’s not a pretty thing; it was not written to call up pictures of lovers with stars in their eyes. It means doomed by fate, by the stars. And since Romeo and Juliet is the story of two star-crossed lovers…well, you can fill in the rest.

The Scarlet Letter mishap is more minor, but still interesting to look at. Hester Prynne was marked with the scarlet letter to shame her, as punishment for her crime (assumed adultery, since no one save Hester knows if her husband is alive or dead). Hester cannot have a relationship because she is married whereas Swift’s speaker cannot because her father says so. And I doubt Swift is forbidden because she committed adultery.

*Eventually I want to embed things like videos, but I do want to do some more research on fair use. I’m pretty sure it’s okay, but I do want to check. I also want to find some way to use something like an LJ-cut for lyrics, but I haven’t explored this theme enough to see if something like that is supported. So for now you’ll have to follow my links.