COOOOOOOOOKE!

When gas ran out, it sucked, but I got by.
When people started losing their jobs, it sucked, but it didn't really affect me.
When the banks and companies nearly caved in, it sucked, but I have nothing but student loan debt anyway.


BUT GOD DAMMIT COCA COLA I WILL NOT STAND FOR 16OZ BOTTLES OF DIET COKE!! DON'T THINK I DIDN'T NOTICE.

Science Wednesday!

Social psych today, not at all related to the stuff I'm studying for right now. Ok, but every person should watch this anyway. My apologies for not embedding the video, you'll have to go ahead and make the jump on your own.

Aaaannd since I feel bad for just posting a link, I'll throw in an awesome picture I found on the internet. It's a person's eye during an Indian festival of colors. The Indian festival of colors is now my new travel goal, since I've already hit up New Orleans during Mardi Gras (previous travel goal).

In Defense of "Ya'll"

Now if you read here a lot, you'll have picked up that I live in South Carolina. Its ok, I'll forgive you if you haven't. I'm not really a southern pride kind of person. I'm also politically liberal and try to keep my accent clean (apparently I slip into a drawl when I get angry, but I never hear it). Anyway enough about me. I'm here to talk about ya'll.

The word ya'll fixes a fundamental problem with the English language.

It is not cute, backwards or quaint.Other languages have words for plural and singular you. English didn't happen to get that one. Ya'll is a contraction that makes a distinction between singular and plural "you". For example, "When are you going to get here?" could mean you who is just one person, or you who is a group of people. You could fix this by adding another word that is plural, "When are you guys going to get here" This works, but makes a distinction of what you actually is, which won't be appropriate for every situation, lets say if there are females in the group, or the group isn't a group of people. "When are you all going to get here?" just says "all", as in the whole group. That's a little cumbersome though, adding a whole extra word in there, and it sounds so proper. What do we do? Resort to a contraction that's what. Ya'll. "When are ya'll going to get here?"

See? Now I know that may sound a little funny to you (ya'll), and I don't expect everyone to jump on the train, but please, at least stop assuming that the word marks an ignorant southerner.

Some Thoughts Keeping Me Up

Is it possible that light is just what happens to matter when it goes light speed?

If the big bang theory means that the universe was once all in one place, how big was it? and however big/small it was to begin with, why wasn't it smaller? Was it really all just in one finite little bubble? Or is that just as far as we can take the math? And where was it? Assuming the universe can expand implies some space or some context for it to exist in.

Meh, whatever. I don't know enough about this stuff to really get into it.

Science Wednesday!

Brain Pollution

I just want to say that I think advertising has become an epidemic. I think of it now as cognitive pollution. Advertising is people forcing me to look at and think about things I have no interest in. Millions of dollars are being spent developing ways to make sure that they are almost impossible to ignore. Web ads will flash, move, expand to the entire page, pop over videos that I'm watching or even yell things at me. A week or so ago some friends and I were mildly freaked out when, while sitting in a quiet bedroom we heard a sarcastic "Hell0-oo" come from seemingly nowhere. We eventually discovered that it was an internet ad, chiming from a laptop that had been left on.

Ads for video content make me want to wring necks too. I understand that media corporations are freaking out about copyright and profit and all, but when someone goes to your website, to look at your content do you think you could find some way to not annoy this shit out of us before we get to the stuff that we appreciate? The other day I was Stumbling (if you don't have it, get it now, but not if you have anything important to do) and found a video of a funny commercial that I wanted to watch. It started and I was immediately disappointed. This wasn't a funny commercial. This was a lame commercial I saw on tv all the time. Then I realized that I was watching a before-the-video ad. I had to watch a stupid commercial before I could watch the funny commercial because that's how twisted the world is.

Television ads are no better. This is where the big bucks are going and it shows. In case you haven't noticed, they are LOUD. I mean LOUD. On my tv, about five to seven volume points louder than the programs loud. My favorite commercial to hate right now is this clean coal ad.

The jarring, grating buzz at the end is absolutely uncalled for. Not only is it cringeworthy, it cuts across all conversations or other activity that happen to be going on at the time. So if you think you are going to talk to your family during a commercial break, or do some work for a few minutes. Wrong. You are watching the god d*mn commercials whether you like it or not.

I'm not sure if the super-obvious advertising is the worst part. What about the subliminal kind? When I say subliminal I'm not talking about secret messages that are going to make you hear things, I'm talking about subtle advertising that the average person won't notice, but will ultimately take in. Things like product placement in movies and shows. You think that it was written into the script that your favorite hero just fucking loves Pepsi? Right. Then there are "affiliations" where companies will endorse each other. I got my hair cut yesterday and had five offers to buy a particular brand of hair product. Five. From a real live person, who is being paid by someone who is being paid by someone who really wants me to buy it. I know personally musicians who are paid to endorse brands of instruments and the same goes for athletes. They didn't think that brand of cymbals was the best before, but now every kid they teach they recommend the second best.

What IS this? One of the hottest commodities in America is my attention. Millions, possibly billions of dollars are being put into development, research and distribution of ads that will be the most likely to make me look at them. If attention IS a hot commodity it is being stolen.

and that's not cool

Beyonce

I just bought the new Beyonce CD "I Am... Sasha Fierce". If you think I'm behind the times with this you should know that I don't really listen to a lot of rap or pop unless I'm about to dance to it, and then I'm more worried about looking dumb.

I've been really digging Beyonce lately though, so I shelled out for the album. If you don't already know the record is split into two discs (silver and gold) with different feels to them. The "I am..." disc has the slower and more heart-felt songs while the "Sasha Fierce" one has the dancy... fierce stuff. Not all of the songs were shining stars, but the whole thing was pretty solid. There was a kind of gender-bending undertone, with "If I Were a Boy", "a diva is a female version of a hustler" and the intro to "Video Phone" that was really intriguing. Anyway the album is worth buying, and if not you should at least watch the video for "Single Ladies" at least five times. Srsly.