Birthday OVERLOAD

So once upon a time I was born. About two weeks early actually. May 7, 19xx. 26 years prior, my Aunt (Mom's sister) was also born on May 7. AND 30 years prior to that, HER Mom was born. So yes, 3 of us, 3 generations, share the SAME birthday. I always got a kick out of it, because we are all family, but also because no one could ever really forget our birthdays.

Apparently, my Aunt HATES that she shares a birthday with her mother, because her birthday was always overshadowed by her mom's birthday. Always having to share a cake, not being able to pick what you want for dinner; I could understand that, but since I live over 1,000 miles away from them, it was never an issue for me (thank goodness!).

So now in June, there are about 4 birthdays (and one on the way). My father and my older sister share the same birthday (ironically), and my younger sister's birthday is later in the month. My older (pregnant) sister will be having a baby this week on the same day as her first child (who will be 13). I can only imagine what it would be like to share my birthday with my baby sister (let alone as I turn into a hormone crazed TEENAGER!). In all reality, it is a bit much to handle. On top of the birthdays is Fathers Day and way too much cake.

Furthermore, my family is obsessed with cake. Mom used to buy cake for no reason; not even good cake, just plain white with butter cream icing. I prefer carrot cake or even red velvet cake.

My dad made the (losing) argument that we can't get a cake for the new baby because it isn't her birthday. Yeah, imagine how that argument went...

Dad: Why do we need a cake for that, it's not her birthday!

Me: OMG Dad are you JOKING! Um, HELLO, that IS the BIRTHDAY. The day that sets up all the birthdays for the rest of her LIFE!

Dad: What are we going to celebrate, ZERO?

Me: No, her BIRTH!

Don't get me wrong here, my dad is no dummy, maybe he was just having a blonde moment.

UPDATE: The baby was born at 3 pm on June 18, so it was not another double birthday-day! Aleah, my niece!

Paint That Sh*t Gold

A friend told me about this Web site called "Paint that sh*t gold" last week so I ventured over there yesterday to find out that you can grab any page on the Internet and literally paint it gold, or black or white-ish. Above you can see a sample of someone's work.

It is essentially an ad for the band Atmosphere. When you go to the Web site www.paintthatshitgold.com you can pick any site and spray paint it, write on it, they even have stencils for you to do certain designs. They have a beard, cassette tape, afro, name tag, hair pick, a star, a bird, the alphabet, numbers, and so on. In the background they play the music from Atmosphere's new album When Life Gives you Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold.

So I loved the music so much that I bought the album. Hopefully they are making lots of sales from the combination of cool music and an even cooler online graffiti site that anyone can enjoy.

Limbo and Graduation

This past week I finished college. Graduation is in about a week. This post is devoted to the effects of college on me and my friends. What we've learned (not necessarily in the classroom), what we've seen, where we're going, and so on.

1. Staying up all night kills brain cells. Apparently this is completely true, exhaustion is equatable to being drunk and it kills brain cells. I pulled several all nighters, and got A's on every project that was worked on through the night all 4 years. Also, staying awake for over 72 hours causes one to dream while awake. Almost make it there... but not quite.

2. How to talk like an adult. It's so much easier to get your point across when you actually know words that mean what you're trying to say.

3. Just because you are friends, doesn't mean you should be roommates. I lived for about a year and a half with some friends and it didn't really work out so I got randoms and I love them. Not that that's true for everyone.

4. There is no substitute for gameday tailgating. Three national championships in 366 days. Enough said.

5. [adult swim] = best thing on TV. Next to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of course.

6. Everyone knows everything about the economy (and the future). People watch way too much news commentary. They don't take them the time to generate their own views, the steal those of others, whose flamboyant news shows are annoying at best.

7. There is nowhere to park. Ever. Unless for some dumbass reason you want to valet your car in "downtown" Gainesville, in which case you're in luck! They've blocked off 7 of the 22 available spaces for you!

8. Pizza. The 8th food group. Good for every meal, hot, cold, leftover, fresh, sober, breakfast, and midnight snack.

9. High heels Are only for dressy presentations and interviews, and falling down in downtown clubs.

10. Your favorite show will be canceled and then brought back again. IE Futurama and Family Guy.

11. Grocery shopping is a numbers game. Beer takes precedence over vegetables, and energy drinks and potato chips are irreplaceable.

12. (from my friend Jay) Nucleophiles are prone to attacking the carbon in a carboxyl group that will move the double bond up to the oxygen.

and finally,

13. Life is as easy, difficult, troublesome, fun, exciting, tiring and as ludicrous as you make it to be.

So here's to those moving on, and those moving up. Good Luck my friends!

Side Tracked

As of late I have been cramming every second of my life into my last class to graduate college. No need to explain, just late nights and long hours with my team. This week M-F I probably only slept about 7% of the time.

The good thing about it I guess is that I know what it feels like to be awake every hour. Don't know if that's useful or not, but I know now. It's been quite an experience. Between late night pizza, early morning hash browns, energy drinks (I refuse to drink coffee), and second, third and fourth winds, the team's been getting along well.

In between sucking down Adrenaline Rush and trying to put together sections and plans for our giant book/ project, I have been playing Soul Calibur II. I rediscovered it at the video game store after playing it constantly freshman year in my then-boyfriend's dorm room. I want to play Tetris but I am afraid of the crazy Tetris dream's I'll start having again... Then again, it can't be any crazier than the strange, nonsensical dreams recently due to a severe lack of sleep.

I'll finish up my music post later this week when I am more inspired. My favorite alternative station switched to playing mainstream rock like Linkin' Park and Staind. It's severely depressing. But I am looking forward to a good week with everything finishing up for the most part.

Radiological Distruction

Once upon a time, I started listening to the radio. I'm not sure when, but I did, sometime after those children's books on tape got boring and country music got cool in the 90's. I listened to Tim McGraw, Brooks & Dunn, Little Texas, Trace Adkins, Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Trisha Yearwood, Martina McBride, and several others.

Somewhere around middle school I grew into 'pop' music. What a terrible name. I digress. I can't complain about getting into pop because it has led me in several different directions musically, but it is the main factor that single-handedly destroying the music industry.

Pop music is for the masses. Masses of people who can't think for themselves or find music that fits their taste. They willingly take what songs Top 40 stations deem 'popular' and don't bother to switch the station when then same "Hey There Delilah" song comes on 12 times a day (when most of us would switch the channel or punch a hole in our dashboards).

Eventually, for those who even occasionally listen to pop, we hear the same songs over and over again. And this is what is ruining the industry. This constant repetition does not allow lesser known artists music to be heard, and only allows for more popular bands to get lost because no one wants to hear their music every time they turn on the jams. So in this day and age, there is no great American musical artist because no one stands out.

Malleable Minds and Natural Human Tendencies

Tonight Jean Kilbourne (www.jeankilbourne.com) came to UF tonight to speak. Her topic was about how advertising causes dieting and excessive thinness in girls.

Let me tell you how unbelievably far she is from the truth.

She talked about how advertisers create images associated with their brand, even though they are all selling the same products, ie sodas, beers, and vodkas cannot be told apart in blind taste tests. Referencing advertising as a toxic cultural environment, she also makes the point that advertising is an educational tool (backwards much?).

I will give her that advertising can make women feel insecure, but the one thing that aggravates me MOST about what she says, is that she believes that advertising portrays women as objects, leading to violence towards women. She backs this up with no facts; just ads that she believes portray women as animals or sexual objects.

She presented several ads about food (mostly chocolate, my fav). She makes the connection that food is presented as a drug, a solution to pain, and in a sexual manner. Uh, DUH those are the techniques we use to get people to buy our products, EMOTIONAL APPEALS. And, let me tell you, about 95 percent of the people in attendance were female and ate chocolate in the past 2 days.

One ad she showed, for Reese's read, "Sex may be better than chocolate, but is sex better than chocolate and peanut butter?" The correct answer is no. Chocolate rules all.

Then, she made a joke about a ménage à trois with Ben and Jerry during this segment. Well, guess what, that was me before the show. I dove into my Oatmeal Cookie Chunk pint briefly before heading to campus. And it was DELICIOUS.

So, lets talk about the effects of the lecture.

Basically, Kilbourne has fed the idea of perfection from advertising into several women's minds over the past 20 plus years. She saw this and began to collect ads over the past few decades to back up a theory not well supported by facts. And now today, she gets paid to speak at colleges and the like about her opinions. The hilariously ironic part of the whole ass backwards situation is that at least 80 percent of her audience buy, wear, and use all the products she shows ads of. From Cheez-its to Diet Coke to Adidas to Michelob the women in the audience are a strong and growing demographic that are materialistic snobs who watch MTV, read US Weekly and wear Juicy Couture (all three = awful CRAP!).

When I approached the mic after the lecture moved to Q&A, I asked Kilbourne how she cannot place blame on the parents of young children who are insecure about themselves due to "advertising." She knowingly admitted to only presenting one side of the argument! She also trivialized the advertising profession by accusing us of invading consumer’s lives by conducting research, such as focus groups, and taking TAKING information from people who willingly give information to marketers.

Obviously, she is oblivious to what advertising entails, and the connections we are trying to make with our targets.

Let's think about this, I am a lecturer wanting to mold the minds of the future. I am going to go to one of the largest universities in the country and present a one-sided argument and press my views on America's future leaders. While I am at it, I will brainwash them into thinking that we need to teach media literacy (the understanding and dismissal of the "manipulation" of advertising) in ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.

So basically, I am going to say that Jean Kilbourne is having little to no (strong) effect on people. Some yes, and very much so. But mostly, no. Women are still going to want to buy sexy clothes, fit into their favorite jeans, eat chocolate when they are stressed (or when they are not!), drink alcohol and soda, and wear make-up.

Now excuse me while I eat my Jelly Bellies and enjoy the pleasant irony of Baby Got Back on my iTunes while I read magazines filled with ads directly targeted to my interests.

Number 1!

Number 1, Ricky Bobby (or Will Ferrell, your choice).

I have begun this blog to talk about how people affect pop culture and society (are they any different anymore?) and the effect of people on pop culture and society (and vice versa). Hence æffected. BUT you can't use the æ letter in the web domain (damn!) so, yeah, you get it.

I started this post with Ricky Bobby because of the effects of Will Ferrell on comedy. His box office hits make millions, because of his acting (and Adam McKay's writing). Is he a superstar, a comedian, or phenomenon? Time has shown all of these, but he is merely a man. A man America loves. I'll admit to his hilarity (seeing I own some of his movies and a "Best of Will Ferrell" SNL DVD), but what is his effect?

His movies (and those of colleagues Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson) have given birth to a new type of comedy/classic. The films are plotless (somewhat) and have turned into cult classics because of their use of the same actors. They play into (onto?) trends that my generation align themselves with most - sports, fashion, drinking, parties, cars, music, and even pop culture itself. Which have, in turn, led to the new array of comedic films with (more serious plot and) actors like Steve Carrel (40-year-old Virgin) and Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, Superbad), and producer/ writer Judd Apatow (Anchorman, Kicking and Screaming, Talladega Nights, 40-year-old Virgin, Knocked Up, Walk Hard, and the upcoming Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express).

We touched somewhat on this in my Writing Through the Media class, on why comedy (as a genre) is used to get messages across in film. We tend to watch comedies multiple times, while political dramas are watched, appreciated and left to be remembered and on the shelves of your local Wal-Mart. Then again, maybe you bought The Good Shepherd (hated it) or Munich (good but depressing, don't care to see it again) and watch it once a month or more.

Stay tuned for more, I want to post a few times a week, but seeing that I am graduating in like 6 or 7 weeks so it won't be much until May. I will discuss Advertising heavily because it is one of my greatest passions (and future field of work), but also about TV, trends, games, technology, evolution, dreams, science, art, anything really that comes to my mind. I will question, argue, complain and make obnoxious claims, but I will also make good points and do my best to leave you satisfied at the end. (That's what she said!)