From Futility Closet

Yeah, so get a simple melodic idea, like three notes or something and then just sing about something you know. Don’t worry too much if you can’t make all of the words fit the notes. And don’t be afraid of clichés. I used to shy from them but they work fine. Listen to Deerhunter if you don’t believe it.

Use a bit of simple repetition and remember that sometimes it’s better to repeat a good verse than write another verse that isn’t very good. Also, don’t say “confusion” as part of a sentence because that shit is played out. Um, maybe I’ll write a bit more about that. I don’t know how up on poetry kind of stuff you are, but I think it’s important to understand figurative language. You don’t need to write poetry when you write lyrics but forever rhyming “bat” with “chat” isn’t what you want to be doing either.

So, I guess I want to talk about creativity in lyric writing. This picture is a nice introduction to what I want to say. What poets are meant to be good at is hiding what they’re actually saying in figurative language. When you write a song you should pay attention to this to a moderate extent. That ‘love’ is the most common word in those top 200 songs from that picture kind of points out that people are lazy when it comes to writing lyrics. Saying “I love you” or “I don’t love you” are cheap ways to convey a message. Those two sentences are pretty hollow and don’t actually go very far to showing someone the way you feel. Granted not every occurrence of ‘love’ would have been in one of those contexts but I’d say heaps of them were.

I haven’t read any of these stories but the title of the collection is a good example of what I’m talking about. When you love someone you don’t just start saying “I love you” to them and the converse is also true. “I love/don’t love you” is an example of a cliché that is largely ineffective in lyric writing. “I miss you” is a cliché that is much easier to make sound meaningful but there are myriad ways to say these things that don’t involve the words “love” or “miss”.

With that in mind, however, it is still important to be penetrable. If everyone wrote lyrics like the Mars Volta the music world would be much more of a confusing and confused entity. Don’t be afraid to sing a song about the summer or the beach or driving somewhere or high-school or love or something. Remember, however, that you will be singing the song so make sure you use language that is within your vernacular. If you are singing outside your experience consider changing the viewpoint.

Also: you are a New Zealander and you say “caRn’t, demaRnd, laRst, daRnce” etc. Singing like an American is for Americans, remember?

Another also: inspiration can strike you anywhere. Consider taking some steps to make sure you can record a melody or write a sentence wherever you may be. [EDIT: This is something that comes up in "song writing workshops". I wrote it when I wrote the email but I don't really follow or believe it. Writing down words when they happen to you can be helpful but generally good melodic ideas don't happen to me unless I'm working on music at the moment. Random accidents are few and far between in my experience but YMMV.]

Final also: if nothing is working then write some callow stuff about love and girls and rhyme heaps of stuff with “night”.

The emo bits are my lyrics.

The extras are apostrophes.

EDIT: I’m adding links. All of this stuff comes from the first page of google but here they are anyway.

Two Hundred Party Bangers From SLEEP500

Done! Have a nice party and remember to thank us.

Knee-high socks are not to be worn with stockings underneath.

I know fashionising.com think it’s ok to wear stockings underneath as layering to add “a whole new dimension to an outfit.” A whole new dimension of stupid, perhaps, but not a whole new dimension of good. I know that it’s “practical” because it’s winter and the other morning it was -5ºC. You want to wear knee-highs with your boots because they look good but you feel like you need something warmer than just knee-highs. Seriously? Practical ≠ fashionable. Otherwise you’d be walking around in oilskins, gumboots and wool everything else with one of those waterproof cellphones and a Panasonic Toughbook.

My stylist told me that this is kind of the poor-man’s version of wearing thigh-high boots with stockings. YOU GUYS WANNA LOOK LIKE POOR PEOPLE?

Spit.

This evening I read this and nearly died laughing.

I’m trying to share it everywhere so just bear with me.

• Never get a visa for the United States. Never. Just fill out one of the green slip things and tell them you’re here to “chill outies” or something. Honestly, the first dude I spoke to was trying so hard to get me into the country he wouldn’t have cared if I’d been waving a 9mm around in his face. Sadly, I pressed the “I have a visa that is being processed,” line (on advice from an immigration attorney) and we were referred to “secondary.” This is where we stayed for the rest of the day.
• SPEAK ENGLISH. Nothing is more important than this. Although Customs and Immigration employ many cunning linguists, if you can’t speak English you’re a second- or third-class citizen NO SHIT. This one dude who was having trouble finding a Mandarin translator got arrested in front of everyone even though he looked like he was packing some serious $$$. When I was out back being questioned his luggage was still there BUT NO SIGN OF HIM. I BET THEY KILLED HIM. KILLED HIM FOR NOT SPEAKING AMERICAN.
• Make sure that your application isn’t shuffled between shifts. Our case went through three shifts of officers and two different supervisors and what seemed like two different Port Directors (but I think it was just one dickface changing his mind.) DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU. DON’T BE A VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCE.
• DO YOUR UTMOST to ensure that when the overly-keen officer dude is playing you Placebo from his iPhone and looking up your band on the Internet he doesn’t find any reference to vulgarity or drugs or an EP with “CUNTTTT” in the title or anything like that.
• If one of the officers tells you that the Port Director has “graciously” waived the 545USD per person fee, stick by this NO MATTER WHAT. Just because some wanker in the office out back changed his mind doesn’t mean that you and your friends are going to be $2180 out of pocket. Fuck that.
• Don’t get some lawyer in Vermont to process your visa application in such a manner that it gets approved the night before you arrive at LAX meaning not only do you have no documentation to show you have a visa, there is no evidence of the visa in anyone’s computer systems and customs basically have to take the lawyer’s word for it.

For anyone who didn’t care about this, here are some tits:

LOZL JUST KIDDING:

The chick who sent this to me said: “You don’t have black people in NZ so you need to watch this.”

Alright. It is ok to wear leggings as pants AS LONG AS you aren’t wearing Ugg boots. As soon as you wear ugg boots you are a 0/10 and I hope you die.

Wear leggings with really big high heels:

Exceptions (there are no exceptions to the Ugg boot rule): Jeggings.

Jeggings are fucking lamer. If you want to wear tight jeans just wear tight jeans.

Man, this is the hottest chick I’ve seen in a while. She’s doing a bunch of things right: Looks cute, has red hair, is on a farm somewhere getting in touch with nature (she is probably a modernist) and she is wearing something that doesn’t say, “LOOK AT MY FUCKING TITS!!!” She is also wearing cute high heels just like I always say and she almost, but not quite, has camel toe which is good because it reminds us that with great power comes great responsibility.

Unfortunately she is wearing some stupid belt and jeggings. While her jeggings are looking pretty sexy from here, when you get a bit closer you realise those seams are just a lie. Fuck that shit. Everyone knows chicks only wear pants because pants have seams and you can ride a seam to happiness in a room full of people. Wearing pants that are pretending to have a seam is like carrying around an mp3 player with no songs loaded on it.

What the fuck?

Yeah, anyway – this seems like an OK kind of service to me, but I bet they just throw this box in the bin at the end of every day anyway.

That’s too bad because I guarantee the box is full of this:

Fact of the Year

At 4am Burger King resets all of the tills no matter how many hungry, drunk people are in the store.

That is all.

Wait:

“Where do I start?”
“What is a good anime?”
“I don’t want to be a fanboy but (x), (y), (z).”

Here is a list of some good places to start:

Cowboy Bebop

Is a classic in the anime realm. Don’t know when it was made, don’t really care. Tells the life and times of a group of dysfunctional bounty hunters in the future (if the future was more like retro-future, where retro=Wild West).

Neon Genesis Evangelion

This is another classic. Fourteen-year-old cuties in giant robot suits saving the world. The main character is a fucking bitch but you should probably watch it anyway. I seem to remember being kind of bored when I watched this back-to-back, but now that I think about it I get really excited.
***BONUS (REALLY BAD COSPLAY) MATERIAL***

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

This is a really cute anime about a school-girl who thinks she is the centre of the universe. This anime is accesible to just about everyone and has some nice allusions to the Greek and Roman mythology as well. Made me feel all warm and fuzzy and motivated to go and “experience” things.

All of the above are series. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how to get them.

Hayao Miyazaki is a director of some madcore awesome animated feature films. They are bascially folk stories so don’t watch them if you only like sex and the Internet.

Howl’s Moving Castle

Is the business as far as I’m concerned. Great concept, great animation, great story. Some cute chick gets transformed into an old lady and ends up on some crazy semi-living robot house with Howl. Good times.

Spirited Away

I remember not caring about this at all when it came out because I liked Slipknot or something. Cute little girl finds a spirit land and a giant bath-house. She gets roped in to the bath house and the spirit land and spends the movie trying to esccape. I love this movie and I just remembered that this Japanese dude gave me a Spirited Away book! Ha-ha! Wait, I got it out just then and it’s all in 日本語. Oh well there are some cute sketches and concept art.

I used the Google and discovered that the mainstream media has very little idea of what constitutes a hot geek. I think they kind of get “hot,” and I think they have some understanding of the concept of “geek,” but when you combine the two terms you don’t get shit.

Proof:

HOT:

Yeah, I guess this is pretty hot. I edited this image because it wasn’t work-safe. I hate it when Google filters my search results but occasionally it can be problematic (read: fun).

GEEK:

This has nothing to do with geeks at all. Everyone who owns a cellphone can read this. Actually, anyone with a basic grasp of the Latin alphabet can replace numbers with letters in their heads. This shirt would be better if it were all written in Linear B. You thought that I was going to say Binary. No. Binary is what computers use – not geeks. Geeks are more alternative than people who organise their social circles around a few buzz bands. Linear B is the altest language ever. Scene kids, listen up.

LINEAR B:

GET ON IT.

HOT GEEK:

This is not a geek girl at all. Geeks don’t actually use that cellotape/masking tape for the glasses – they get new glasses. Geeks own the server that sleep500 is on, and they make heaps of fucking money off Goss and me – they just ring up their optometrist and go, “Hi, Mike. Yes I need another pair. Have the chauffeur knock twice and leave them on the doorstep. No, I do not want to accompany you to Pharrell’s bachelor pad. He is going to pick me up after his gig. Yes, I am a big deal. Goodbye.”

I just looked at the picture again and that girl hasn’t done a very impressive job of dressing herself. Geeks stay away from gimmicks like cleavage.

For some reason there is a large misconception that girls wearing t-shirts like these are geeks. This is incorrect. These girls are consumers of geeks. If you start going out with a child molesterer, it does not make you a child molesterer (well, maybe it does by association if the molestering was happening whilst you were there. I don’t know much about the laws surrounding pedophilia). Long story short: This chick is not a geek.

HOT GEEK CHICK:

This is not a “hot geek chick.” This is Sasha Grey and she is a porn actress. Just because you put glasses on does not mean you are a geek. Also – why would this “geek” be in a classroom? Evidently she is too old for school and Sasha Grey is too much of a brat to be cast as a school teacher. The people who constructed this “How To” are guilty of spreading misinformation. Shame on them.

HOT GEEK GUY:

The media definitely have this one wrong. You can’t just take some guy who knows where the gym is, give him a personal trainer and some black-rimmed prescription glasses (prescription optional) and assume that he is a geek. It doesn’t work like that. Being a geek is a lifestyle choice just like being a ‘streamer or a pretentious fuckface (note: there are more choices than the three I just referenced. Don’t rage against me – rage against the machine). Geeks don’t give a fuck about bicep curls or bench presses or treadmills or the lamer gym with the lamer people and the lamer admission/subscription charges. A geek only exercises out of necessity. For instance, rather than biking (x) distance just for the feeling of burning in one’s legs a geek would bike to work or school or something. In fact, I have heard of people who aren’t geeks doing this. Fucking crazy, man.

Geeks don’t give a fuck about:
1) Television.
2) Automobiles.
3) Social Networking.
4) Making A Good Impression.
5) Meeting New/Exciting/Important People.
6) Your New Clothing Item.
7) Etc

Geeks do give a fuck about:
1) World of Warcraft.
2) Linear B
3) When You Go To A Website And The Entire Thing Is Flash, Fuck That Shit Is Lame.
4) Obscure Anime Forums.
5) Japan.
6) ???
7) Profit.

Yeah, this was meant to be a definitive post but this is a long way from being definitive. I guess life is just like that. This is part one of on-going research. Feel free to contribute. Don’t bother emailing me – I don’t really care about that. Use the comment function. Hmm, I just realised that I have embedded an image that is probably from a pornsite. We could be in for some spam like that GTA post. Oh, well.

I think this is a Fashion post.

But when I got down to the mall there was a severe lack of sluttz and/or school-girls. It was like someone had sent out a memo or some shit or maybe all of the school-kids got held in from school because “Rave Girl” was having a sale and they didn’t want a riot to happen or something.

What I did see, however, was a large amount of these fucking things:

I know it is nearly winter here, and the news says that winter is setting in early due to some “storm” in the North-East but why do chicks have to do this?

FACTS ABOUT UGG-BOOTS
Wearing Uggz says the following about you:
1) You think being lazy means you look like a relaxed, carefree person.
2) You don’t shave your legs.
3) You don’t clean your vagina.
4) You hate (giving or receiving) oral sex.
5) You are an expendable part of society.
6) You support racial hatred.

Wearing Ugg-boots with jeans is fucking horrendous. If you want to wear jeans and stay warm, wear some bitching sneakers like these:

This will ensure you don’t look like a fucking troll. But please, all self-respecting Japanese women know that the ideal winter garb is leg-warmers and high-heels. Anything other than this is a massive underachievement and will not get you laid. Trust me on this one.

You can also do them with leggings if you need to: