remember elmo, guys?

thanksgiving has passed and it is immediately christmas time. like, immediately. i barely put my licked clean of turkey dinner dish into the sink before my mom had christmas tunes playing.  I don't mind though, i love christmas. but, i don't necessarily love the craziness it brings out in people.


I have never participated in black friday. ever. i hate people when i shop, and i'd rather go on a random day when the stores are empty and i can just get shit done.  This year was different.  my older sister, my younger sister and my mom were all down to go to Target at 4 am.  and i figured i should experience this crazy day/morning for myself in order to fully know how much i hate it. 


Literally, at 4 am the parking lot was packed and the store was full of people buying tv's in fucking bulk.  it was so weird. my mom bought my sister a wii for christmas and it was dirt cheap, so that was cool...  but it was so bizarre how many people woke up for this chaos.  


Now, thinking about it, its like, ten hours ago we were supposedly giving thanks to everything we have and appreciating our family and friends because we are lucky we have anything at all.  and now, those same people are pretending they don't hear me say "excuse me" when i am really just trying to get by them, i'm not after their fucking precious play station they've been waiting for.  chill out people.


I understand you want to make your kids happy, make your friends happy, by getting them the ultimate christmas gift, and if you can get it for a cheap price, hey,  i love a good deal too.  but come on, don't be crazy. 
...i think we all remember the "tickle me elmo" incident a few years back. 

amateurs everywhere.

I've been thinking a lot about if there is high art and low art.  I really feel like its so subjective who can say if one artist's piece of work is better than someone elses? If I have a totally different style than someone I am obviously going to have different tastes in art.  Maybe some artists have more "technique" but that doesn't necessarily mean I will enjoy it more. 

I am taking a ceramics class this semester.  I am a complete amateur.  I don't really know what I'm doing but I just wing it, and my teacher suggested me majoring in this.  So its like, even amateurs have to start somewhere.  Right?

People who post their work on blogs or facebook are amateurs but what's wrong with that?  I might be really inspired by some random artists work and I wouldn't see it unless they posted it somewhere.  

So, in my amateur opinion, I think that the idea of high art and low art is silly.  It's whatever you make of it.  The other day I totally wrecked a piece I made in class and I hated it, but my teacher came over and loved it and convinced me not to throw it away.  It was high art to her and low art to me.

Basically what I'm saying is that  amateurs can make high art to someone and experts can make low art to someone.

windows seven.

That new commercial for the Windows 7 phone kind of confused me.


When I first watched it I seriously thought it was all about how we use our phones too much and we are missing out on life because our heads are always staring into the little screen in our hands.  And then at the end of it I was like oh. this is supposed to make me want to buy a new phone? I don't know maybe I'm missing the real point but to me it just made me think about how I do use my phone too much and I should try to stop.


So.. now will I go buy the new Windows 7 phone? Nope. I actually have been seriously trying to use my phone less.  For example, I realized how fucking annoying it is when people are texting when you are trying to speak to them. So I've made a conscious effort to put my phone away when I'm with my friends. 


If I'm hanging out with my friends then who else do I really need to be texting?

desensitize this.

So I was thinking about how much the web has truly desensitized us to certain things.  For example, personally, I feel like when I hear about really vulgar stories regarding rape, drugs, murder, I am not as phased as I should be.  Its like, we hear about these things so much and in such a nonchalant manner through the web that it doesn't have the impact on us as a society anymore.

But... is that really true?  Because, then I started thinking about the recent suicides of the gay men who were bullied or made to feel inadequate because of their sexuality.  They obviously were not desensitized to the words they read through their facebooks or twitters.  Its like, we are still affected by what we read or hear through the web in such an extreme way; the web literally has the power to kill.   


That thought made me kind of uncomfortable for a second.  The same page that I visit every single day, every single hour of my life and joke to my friends, stalk strangers, procrastinate.. this is one of the sites that others are viewing and resorting to suicide because of the things they see about themselves.  How did facebook/twitter get that power?  And when did people think that they should use social media vehicles to torture and torment other people?


I change my mind.  We really aren't too desensitized to everything on the web, we are still very sensitive.

the web helps me. i swear.

Facebook has been consuming my blog/life for the past few weeks.

I feel like in our class discussions we always remind ourselves about how awful facebook is for our youthful minds and how authors such as Keen think sites like this are making us dumber.  But am I really becoming dumber and less human because of facebook?

Maybe some people are, but that's because they probably are shy in real life too, so they use facebook as an outlet.  It's not like the people who are incapable of talking face to face would really be drastically different without sites like facebook.  Maybe we'd spend our time differently... but let's be real I'd probably just end up shopping on line or watching tv, or finding some way to get distracted and procrastinate before doing actual work. 


I just noticed how I've been ragging on facebook for the past few weeks and I should probably stop since I myself am one of facebook's number one fans.  I think that there are definitely pros to facebook because I can count a few occasions when I've found classmates or they've found me through facebook and its helped a lot when I've had a project or something and couldn't get in touch with them any other way.


I know.. that's just one example and it only happened a couple of times, but what would I have done without it?

I just wanted to make sure I wasn't criticizing the web too much, since I do love it.. and I think we all need it to some extent.