Eject Button!

I've got a lot of shit clogging my brain on this fine evening. Rather than picking one and writing a bunch of shit about it, I've decided that I'm going to write less about several things. In journalism they call that a notebook. I've decided I'm just hitting the eject button on all this stuff in my head.

EJECT!

Birthday Glamour

Me!

That's what tomorrow is all about, bitches. September 9th of 1992 my dear sweet mother shoved my infantile body unto the earth, and bam! Now I have that day as a day to commemorate all my glory. Some people tend to be really non-chalant about their birthday. It's just a number, whatever. Some people tend to go over the top with it and make sure everyone knows it's their birthday. I am definitely somewhere in the second category. It's my birthday, so it's your responsibility to give at least ten seconds of that day paying your respects to me. I never got a lot for my birthday, some of you kids with your extended families and crap end up rolling in dough and awesome presents. I was never in that category. So to make up for it I make sure everyone I spend more than five minutes with knows it's my birthday.

Does that make me an asshole? Or do people deserve a day where the world owes them shit. Because, let's face it, birthdays are only a good thing for so long anyway. Once your 25 birthdays stop being cool. You start scrounging for the past and whatnot, so why not live up the birthdays we can fall in love with? And shit, I'm eighteen. I may make a Facebook event about it. This year will be my first birthday away from home, but my brother and dad are visiting to make things a little better. Not to mention I'm in college. It's my birthday weekend. You do the math. I'll do the meth. ;)

Inglorious Bastards

I dunno, guys. Did I spell that wrong or right? Anyway, I am in U of I's College of Media. Media includes things like broadcast journalism print journalism and, what the fuck, advertising? Anyway, the interim dean, an advertising expert, came and spoke to our Media 100 orientation class yesterday. And yeah, ads are as evil as they seem. They just try and get you to buy shit you don't need for prices you shouldn't pay. Cool. Thanks, I'm glad they exist. Their whole career revolves around making the public give money to corporations. Good. What a fine public service.

She spent the first half of her lecture blabbing about how brands are great for advertisers because they make the job easier and they create the illusion of reliability with the consumer. You probably like either Coca-Cola or Pepsi more than the other. You probably like Oreo Cookies. Advertisers' goal is to antagonize those who don't use their product. Oh, you don't drink Miller Lite? Well I'm a hot girl, and I think that you're less of a manly man for drinking Miller Lite instead of Budweiser. Oh also I'm perfect because I love beer, so you should definitely listen to me. Fuck that. Oh, you know Dove for men? Yeah, that shit makes you gay. So don't use it. Be a man, use Gillette. I hate advertisers like that. You know what's a good ad?

OLD SPICE ODAH BLOCKA BLOCK ODAH FO SIXTEEN HOURS! BITCH!

BLOCK! BLOCK! BLOCK! BLOCK! BUILDING KICK! OLD SPICE ODAH BLOCKA BODY WASH! ...I'm on a horse.

Thank God for Old Spice being funny. They satirize the whole manly product image while simultaneously luring dumbasses who don't get that they're joking into thinking they're buying manly stuff. Regardless, advertisers want you to make decisions beneficial to their wallets. They don't care about you. They truly don't. Why do they care about you. Because you give good money. They are and always be that boyfriend who thinks you're too hot to dump. They don't love you. They just love your sex. Your money. I'm kind of pissed that the College I'm in is associated with pricks like that.

Don't get me wrong though, not all advertising is bad advertising. Have you seen those cute ass animal adoption commercials on Animal Planet? Awwwwww.

Campus Wars

I've been at college for three weeks now. One of the more entertaining aspects to the whole college experience is the ways of commuting about campus. There are three modes of transportation you're sure to catch anywhere. People walking, people biking, and people driving. The hilarious part? Traversing by each of these modes of transportation causes you to dislike people who travel by any of the other two methods. Confusing? If you walk, bikers and drivers annoy you. If you bike, walkers and drivers annoy you. If you drive, everyone not driving annoys you.

I ally myself with the walking camp. We use simple transportation, there's no risk involved, except for punctuality, but that's totally avoidable if you plan ahead. And there is no greater satisfaction than walking peacefully by a crosswalk as five cars line up as they wait for your sweet time taking ass. Why? Why am I bitter? Because they have a car. They can get to places in five minutes that it takes me twenty minutes to get. That sucks. They WILL wait for me. Because in the end, they have it better. Bikers are hated by everyone, but in a more bitter sense by us walkers. We really can't do anything about them. If they run into you they win. If they don't run into you, they still win. It's super annoying. Bikes and cars get along like dogs and cats. If you put them on the same road, hell is sure to break loose.

The surprising all-approved method of transportation? Skateboards. More effective than you might think. They speed by us walkers without taking up space or being an inconvenience when traffic gets heavy. Bikers have no problem because they move more swiftly than walkers and take up less space. Cars don't mind them because they move quickly across crosswalks and rarely cause problems if there are no sidewalks to ride on. Advice? Learn to skateboard, kids. There's no flaw in it. Especially longboards. Those look super awesome, in addition to being better at getting you to where you're going than skateboards.

Scary Movie 8

Scary movies have always been a thing for me. When I was younger I would scare easily. I would get freaked out by Goosebumps and other freaky things. You heard previously of my fear of zombies. I just kind of always stayed away from scary movies. I figured there was no point in watching something that's just going to piss me off. When your friends jump out and scare you, it makes you feel zero positive emotions. Especially when they laugh at you afterwards. That's what I always imagined the credits of a horror movie being like. Just the director and cast laughing at you for getting scared shitless by their stupid worthless production. Halloween would come around and the Jason and Michael Meyers movies would blow up TNT and AMC and I would always be the apprehensive one of the group who would suggest just playing more video games. What's wrong with that? Unless of course, you play Resident Evil.

Lately I've changed my mind on the subject. I've started watching scary movies over the past couple years. And yeah, my body succumbs to the goosebumps. But there's an odd feeling of satisfaction watching a scary movie all the way through. I don't know what it is, but when you see traumatic events that someone lives through you sort of get a feeling of relief, and the feeling of fear that bogged you down and was surely removing any chance of self-enjoyment just mere minutes ago is now seemingly gone forever. Weird how that works, eh?

Well luckily for us, the viewer, scary movies have taken a turn for the better over the last few years. Well, the good ones anyway. They've stopped being solely about deranged killers hacking the crap out of kids your age. Finally we get some substance from horror movies, making them all the more scary. The Ring was a good scary movie because it made you freaked you out. It was weird scary, in addition to physically scary. The Hills Have Eyes was physically scary, but not very weird scary. The first Saw movie was relatable scary, and every movie that has ever been made about an exorcism still freaks me out. Last night, my roommate and I watched a Youtube saga which reminded me of Paranormal Activity and The Ring, if you were to combine the two. It is about a guy investigating the tapes that supposedly held the answers to why his friend moved away and halted contact with the guy forever. It is a weird scary, as they play with sound and visuals and go through several tedious steps to make the tale believable. The acting is excellent, and the thrills are quite enjoyable. The series never admits to being false, though it is clearly just an excellent work of fiction. The series is entitled Marble Hornets. It is a 26 part series and takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to watch. The use of silence in the film is powerful and shows just how stupid music in horror movies really is. When you rely on added music to make something scare people, it's quite evident that your product kinda sucks.

One aspect that bugs me about this production and Paranormal Activity is the lack of admission to the viewer that the movie is false. This is a very personal annoyance, as I'm sure the general benefit would side with keeping it an unstated truth. But while watching Paranormal Activity and Marble Hornets, I found myself griping the whole time about how this and that isn't possible and how that means it can't be real. Trying to find flaws in the movie rather than embellish the many positives. Whatever.

Happy Appetizer

To change from scared to excited in the (second) best of ways, football season is upon us! Tomorrow, for my birthday, Commissioner Roger Goodell and the good folks over at the NFL have organized a football game for me to watch. How sweet. This one's professional! How exciting!

However, let me take the following paragraph to thank the college football season for doing its part to make me happy.

College football, I don't love you. I could never love you. You lack the consistency, you often disappoint me and lets face it, you just aren't as "good" as the NFL. However, I would like to thank you for providing a shit ton of entertainment to me over the course of the weekend. Week one in college is one of the better weeks. Because you don't have to think about the BCS, some overhyped team always gets upset, and EVERYBODY PLAYS. Thursday started me off with USC and Oregon, a traditional collegiate contest in which the better team won and the worse team kept trying to make it interesting but kept failing to do so. Friday, well, who needs football when you have Friday. Saturday, SATURDAY. Start me off BRIGHT AND EARLY with an Illinois-Mizzou game that was actually interesting, albeit disappointing, while simultaneously uplifting. If that makes any sense. It gave me something to do. Inspired me and my friends to go out and play catch with the football, which is the greatest object to play catch with. Other than like, cats. Or puppies (WARNING: THAT VIDEO ISN'T CUTE) (This one will make you feel better about it though). Saturday night Oregon State and TCU played in a game that was mildly entertaining but footbally nonetheless. Sunday provided us with the gem of the weekend. East Carolina University versus Tulsa. This was a shit game. ESPN had nothing better to show. So when these teams went back and forth down the field to score touchdowns on TEN CONSECUTIVE DRIVES (Note: That's a SHIT TON of consecutive drives) I was more than pleasantly surprised. The final score was 51-49. 100 glorious points. And the final play of the game included a 6'8" guy (imagine Lebron James) leaping up and snagging a hail mary at the highest possible point he could have and pulling it down, sacrificing pain and his wind to catch the ball and bring ECU a fun victory with 0:00 flashing on the clock. What a game. Boise State and Virginia Tech played a stellar game on Monday also, which of course was viewed with higher regards due to the inclusion of two top ten programs. Whatever. ECU Tulsa will always have my heart. Because it's college. It's not like any of the teams could beat the Browns anyway.

Which is why I'm dumping college football tonight, and making my getaway with pro football. It is a million times grander and every aspect of it is more interesting. I <3>

Reaction

After reading Mada's post yesterday about Big Ten night life (good job by the way Mag), I started thinking about it. Why has society fallen to that stupid level of existence? You go to college so you can drink and hook up? Is that really it? Is socializing a dying art?

Obviously these are ridiculous questions. But at times its hard to see the point when all this crap goes on so much. Getting girls is such an overblown aspect of college and its funny because when you try and argue with these people about their way of life, it suddenly becomes difficult to fault. Yeah, it's a shallow existence that you'll never gain anything from. But if you can get past that (which, trust me, they've all gotten past that) it has an overwhelming amount of benefits. You meet people by signing up for frats and sororities and you intermingle with them and hook up and drink beer and stumble all over campus and are a douche bag and what not. But, they honestly have no regrets. Maybe they just have nothing better to do with themselves. We'll see what their future holds. Historically it hasn't been much of a hold back for people who are coherent enough to do their required coursework and earn a degree.

I certainly hope I can find a group of good wholesome people here at college who don't participate in the douchebaggery that is going out getting wasted and banging people as their only source of recreational fun. Now if you'll excuse me, it's my birthday in three hours. So I've got places to be. Hope you found something interesting in this amalgam of thoughts of mine. Have a good one. Hah...

--Eliot Sill