The other day I was in line at the grocery store and I saw a girl with an interesting t-shirt.

It wasn’t the good kind of interesting, either. The good kind of interesting t-shirt would be a quirky homemade Star Wars one, or a quirky homemade political one. No, this t-shirt was the bad kind of interesting - the “what-on-earth-were-they-thinking” kind.

The t-shirt would’ve looked innocent to somebody with minimal computer experience. It read, “I wish I could CTRL+ALT+DELETE you”. I reckon it garnered a few laughs from the girl’s giggly middle school friends, but it made me wonder if the makers of the shirt understood what CTRL+ALT+DELETE meant.

See, CTRL+ALT+DELETE does not equal DELETE. CTRL+ALT+DELETE equals “Open Windows Task Manager”. So, do “I wish I could CTRL+ALT+DELETE you”? No. I doubt that would do much. I’d just be able to see all of your processes (none of which I want to see) and be able to shut them down if they are not responding. I could see who you are networking with (phone call from boyfriend? Mother? Pimp? I’ll know). I could see your CPU usage (it’s probably pretty low). I could see your memory specs, but what’s the point if I already know that you’re running very low on RAM?

Point is, if you’re going to wear techy t-shirts, you should know what they mean. This girl obviously does not know much about computers, save for “you can go to Myspace on them”.

Lately I’ve been hanging around Deviantart, hoping to find some nice poetry to read.

Who the hell was I kidding? I’ve found maybe 3 pieces I enjoy, and the rest are crap. Here’s why I hate the vast majority of today’s poetry. Note: Examples are written by me.

“I miss someone WAAAHH” ≠Poetry
When I look at you I cry
Because you left me in the night
With nothing but my tears to keep me company

Now, what’s wrong with this bit? It’s just somebody’s feelings put into verse. I generally hate it when poetry discusses crying in an obvious way (”a wave crashes out of my eyes”, “I taste salt in my sobbing mouth”, “I am crying”) because it’s boring. I don’t care how hard you are crying or how much you miss somebody. If you’re not going to put a semi-original spin on it, don’t write it. Save it for your diary.

Random Spacing = Headaches
The T O T A L I T Y of the situation
Is S T U N N I N G
to M E

I see a word as a family of letters. When the letters are spaced out like this, it screams “dysfunctional family” - or maybe “dysfunctional keyboard”. There is no reason why there needs to be a space between every letter. It doesn’t add to the meaning, although it does add to my headache.
P.S. - The totality of the situation is stunning? As opposed to what, the part of the situation is stunning? Please.

Rhyme Time = Groan, Moan
When I saw your face today
I wanted you to go away
Because see u broke my heart
I think u tore it apart

Wow, “cry” and “die” rhyme well? Brush up your Swedish, you might win a Nobel! I’m being sarcastic, in case you can’t tell. Obvious rhymes make a poem sound like hell. One of the reasons I’m not inclined towards rhyming poetry is because the rhymes are rarely original. Chances are, if it rhymes, Dr. Seuss did it first.

Inconsistencies = WTF
I miss u so much
I wish u’d come home
U broke my heart
I hope u stay gone

So first you miss him and then 2 lines later you don’t? Was there any thought put into this poem at all? Did you write whilst you were intoxicated? I get the mixed emotions thing, but most of the time there’s no segue between the loving and the hating in poetry. Abrupt changes throw me off, and I don’t like being thrown off.

OMG I read it out loud so it must be classified as “Spoken Word” = Dumbass much?

This one has no example because it’s more of a writer’s trait that I hate, versus a poetic trait that I hate. Poets tend to say, “Oh, this poem is spoken word” just because they read it out loud. Was the poem written with the intention of being spoken? Was it spoken, in part or in whole, before being written down? No? Then it shouldn’t be classified as spoken word. Spoken word is rap, hip-hop, or slam poetry, NOT your woeful poem that was spoken after being read.

Big Words = “Do you even know what those words mean?”
A quasi-superficial entity illuminated,
She dwelt lethargically, totemic, yet risqué
in the impermeable compartment

So you flipped through the dictionary, put your finger on a random word, and repeated. Such talent you have. You do NOT know what those words mean. Even I do not know what those words mean, and I’m a girl who loves words and knows thousands and thousands of them. Is this poem going to be read by members of Mensa? No? Then stop trying to impress them with your nonsense.

“I wrote a sonnet” ≠You are smart

This too has no example, since it is more of a writer thing than a poem thing. People like to write sonnets because I guess Shakespeare is cool now. I won’t say that the sonnet is dead, but the good sonnet is nearing extinction. The sonnets these days are often fractured - every other line rhyming means nothing if the syllable count isn’t there. And the sonnet offers a set place for bad rhymes (see “Rhyme Time = Groan, Moan). Do the good sonnets still exist?

I’m not picking on any one poet. Maybe I made fun of Shakespeare a little bit, and perhaps I took a peek at one of my friend’s poems as reference, but this is more about general writers than any specific one. I don’t write poetry very much anymore, but I do read it often, and I know crap when I read it. And a majority of writing today is crap.

So BIL!!! didn’t win W2C 2007. It’s upset him greatly - it’s always been his dream to get recognized in the respectable part of the web. Even if he’s recognized as an idiot or a horrible designer, he still wants acknowledgment. Maybe next year BIL!!! will be back, but with a Justin Timberlake fansite. After all, BIL!!!’s anthem is “SexyBack”. He feels it describes him perfectly. Nobody else feels similarly.

If you’d like to give BIL!!! condolences, you may do so here. I’ll forward them to BIL!!! when he’s feeling better - right now he’s locked his door so that nobody sees him crying.

Note: I did not support BIL!!!. I think his site was the dead obvious choice for the contest, and where’s the fun in voting for the top dog?

I put up a new layout a couple of days ago, only to find that it won’t even load in Firefox. It reverts back to the old one no matter what I do. It’s all good and fine in IE, but not Firefox. I don’t know why this is happening - it’s not an issue with my coding. I think it’s just Wordpress and Firefox working together to make me frustrated.

What I’m going to attempt to do is re-upload the new theme, but under a different name, and see if that works. If not, then I might have to override this theme’s files with the new one’s. This is incredibly frustrating for me, so please bear (bare? I can never remember) with me if the site looks wonky.

(P.S. Join Colourlovers.com. It’s way awesome and fun - I’m learning color theory and getting over my color-blindness! I’m cbpride on there if you want a buddy.)

Poetry is one of my hobbies. I enjoy writing poetry and reading others’ poetry. I see poetry as a way to express myself, a boredom buster, and a way to experiment with words and writing.

But there comes a time in every writer’s life when just writing is not enough for them. They need to get their writing out there, to get feedback on it. This is so much more difficult than actual writing, because it’s rare to find a person who both appreciates writing and who can offer more than a couple of words on a piece.

This is an issue for me in real life - most people I know are either poetry-haters or too nice to say more than “That’s great”. I say “most” because there are some people who will read my poetry, but dislike it and can never offer a kind or even semi-helpful word. For example, I prefer writing free verse poetry, but my parents and teacher don’t like free verse and don’t really critique my poems, but rather rip them apart without so much as one piece of advice or explanation as to why they don’t like it.

Online is pretty much the same. People don’t like to go out of their way to comment on things like poetry, and when they do they’re far too lazy to type out more than “It’s lame”. This is indeed a comment and feedback, but it’s not a critique - which is what I asked for.

THIS is a critique:
I can’t say that the poem is one of my favorites - I’m not a fan of flowery language and the topic has been done before. The structure, however, was quite interesting and you do seem to know what you’re writing about.

THIS is not:
It’s lame and confusing.

I’m not looking for a full-blown analysis. Quite the contrary - I despise poetry analyses and would prefer it if they were wiped off the face of the earth. I’m just looking for something more in-depth than “I don’t like it”. Is that too much to ask for?

Maybe it’s time to get a different hobby. People will critique your drawings and such without so much as batting an eyelid. But lord, no, critiquing writing takes far too much time and energy, so a half-assed four-word response will do.

Well, gosh, this sure has been a while. Two months now, it must be. My last access to the internet was over a month ago, and that was on the other side of the country and I was being charged $10 an hour for it. But now my internet has returned. It’s dial-up until a DSL port opens up. I’ve got a couple hundred emails to read, a couple hundred songs to download, and a sense of both exhaustion and relief.

But I am back. Back, hopefully for good. Catch me up, please. What’s been goin’ on? Weddings, divorces, births, deaths, anything? I’m terribly behind.

The following tale is a long one, so it’s been hidden to protect the eyes of brats young’uns and those with a short attention span.
(more…)

Long time no see, huh all? I’d be lying if I said that I’ve been too busy to come online, but there IS another perfectly plausible reason for my absence.

So back a few months ago when my brother and his wife lived with us, they made about 5 long-distance phone calls a day. For 3 months. This in turn racked up a whopping $1000 dollar phone bill. It wasn’t paid off, and thus my internet and phone connections were shut off. It’s been two weeks come Thursday, and it’s been perhaps the hardest two weeks of my life. Very difficult.

So here I am, sitting in some stuffy room at my mom’s work, feeding off their wireless internet for a few hours today. I have SO much to catch up on, but I thought I’d blog quickly to let you all know that I am okay (lack of internet aside) and just, you know, update you on the other stuff that’s been going on.

The number 10 is an odd number. Some associate it with decades, others with money. But I, I associate it with the number of days I have left before I go off to Florida. I’ll be gone a week, although I’ve been gone for two weeks now so that’s really not much of a stretch.

The thing with the internet being gone is without it, there really is nothing to do where I live. When you live half a mile away from the nearest building, your bike has a flat tire, and you only get three TV channels, you pretty much rely on the internet to keep you sane. As a last resort about a week into the ‘net absence, I re-installed my former obsession, my former love, onto my computer. I am, of course, talking about The Sims 2. Yes. I used to be addicted to The Sims. I plan on going off to download a ton of stuff right after this.

It really is incredible how lost you get without your beloved internet to turn to 10+ hours a day. It’s also incredible how many times my brother called Pennsylvania. You can’t want to talk to your in-laws THAT much.

I don’t know when I shall return. I don’t know if my mom has any idea I’m dying without the internet, so I might not get to come back here and get on. I estimate that by mid-July, the internet shall return at my house once more. So… until next time.

(P.S. - I miss my Firefox. They’ve only got Internet Explorer here, and it’s the old one - without tabbed browsing. Also, my layout looks really bad in IE6. There’s a reason it was upgraded, people. There’s a reason.)

So I’ve finally got the layout the way I want it. Strike that, layouts. Yup. Scroll down to the footer, and you’ll see that you can now switch between Green and Orange! Fun stuff.

The “crap” thing is coming from the fact that on Wednesday, I have to do a run-through of a workshop I’ll be doing this summer in Florida. I’m not prepared. At all. The person I was relying on to get me the info I needed to do the run-through appears to have dropped off the face of the earth. I might (MIGHT) be able to do it since I’ve only got to do it for an hour versus the three hours this summer. But I’m still panicking.

This morning I tried to play the guitar. I failed. I had SO much trouble with the Fm chord. It was ridiculous. You need about 6 fingers to play the thing. So much for “Hey There Delilah”. I’ve moved on to attempting “21 and Invincible” by the one and only Something Corporate. I’m not doing too bad, actually. Hehe… rock star in the making.

On an unrelated note, Google Maps is awesome. I love the StreetView - I can go to Miami and see it before actually, you know, going there. NYC looked pretty awesome too.

Well, I’ve gotta get going now. Later!

Not really. I was just bored and decided to spoof popular businesses. In the end they all turned out Stalin-based. (Extra credit in history? Probably not)

And before I forget:

I know, right? I finally got Wordpress working. I am so cool.

So basically this is how this is gonna roll. I blog here. And none of the other pages are up yet, so don’t touch those. And Joseph Stalin is an asshole and managed to squeeze himself into the site somehow, so go bug him with retarded questions.

Hopefully everything will begin to run smoothly this weekend, but they might not. Tomorrow I’m spending all day with my friends, and on Saturday I have to go shopping (suitcase, summer clothes, shoes, wallet, sunglasses, you get the picture… I love summer shopping). But I’m free on evenings, and it doesn’t look like anything is happening on Sunday (well, I might be spending the day in bed reading, but besides that). And Monday is a holiday… shit. I hate holidays. It means there’s no work. Maybe I’ll see if I can’t catch a movie or something.

So… yeah. Please don’t break any of the shiny new crap (except Stalin’s page. Go do whatever you like to that). Yes, I know that the alignment of the links and search box are off in IE and Firefox, but the margins conflict with each other that way (just right in IE, too high in Firefox, just right in Firefox, too low in IE). There’s nothing I can do about it, live with it.