The GaGa Code.

Ok, so for the last week, everybody has been bashing on Lady GaGa. Oh GaGa your only mediocre now. Oh GaGa, you used a chord from Express Yourself in Born This Way. Oh GaGa it's not as good as some of your other music, too much hype not enough product, blah blah blah. Lets start with this simple phrase, y'all are dumb asses: of course it isn't as good as the hype, nothing is, ever, it's called advertising. Sell records, make millions, retire and over dose on crack, that is the music industry in a nut shell. If she and her slew of advertising cronies hadn't over inflated the single she wouldn't be making headlines right now. GaGa is a genius of one thing and one thing only: marketing. She knows how to market herself, her product, etc. that is what we love about her not her music, it's all been done before. She’s copying Cyndi Lauper, who copied Madonna, who copied Cher. Anyway, what most people seeking headlines and featured videos on youtube are missing is that Born This Way did something that no other song has ever done: it is an intentional gay anthem. Cher, Kylie, Pink, Gloria Gaynor, Madonna, and any other stereotypical gay icon you can think of, have all had songs that became gay anthems; however, none of them were ever intended to be such. All of the songs those women wrote and or performed were intended to do one thing: hit the top 40, stay there for a couple of weeks until the next single is ready, or the album is. So GaGa may have used two or three classic Madonna tunes, as Cheeks points out in his video Born This Way MEGAMIX, whatever. Madonna's hit album from 2005, Confessions on a Dance Floor, unabashedly borrowed themes from classic Disco groups. Don't believe me? Go listen to Madonna's Hung Up, then Abba's Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight) or the other way round if you prefer, Future Lovers by Madonna uses the main theme of I Feel Love by Donna Summer as the bass line. (Abba is credited in the album booklet but Donna Summer isn't) Most pop albums flirt with variations on themes by other big artist because it's a guaranteed way to sell records. In fact back in the Baroque period, variations on a theme was the highest form of music and the highest praise one could give a composer. Did anybody stop to think that maybe, if at all, she is giving a nod to other big gay icons. Furthermore, there are only so many notes and so many note combinations, especially in pop music, eventually we're going to run out. Some have argued that Raise Your Glass by Pink, We R Who We R by Ke$ha, and Fireworks by Katy Perry are better gay anthems for bullied LGBTQ youth then Born This Way because they were released first. Don't get me wrong, I love all of those songs, but only one of them even slightly resembles a gay anthem: Raise Your Glass by Pink. We R Who We R sounds like all the rest of Ke$ha's pro partying and be as weird and grundgy/slutty as possible, and Fireworks, who new it existed before the video, right? Don't give me that, "oh I new about it before the video and new it was a song of support" garbage, it was a Katy Perry album track not a single. People who listen to her albums, all the way through, knew about it, then she made the feel good video of the year for it and now everybody knows it and it get's sung on Glee. Ok, so I'm a little weird that I actually spent time on this topic. It's ok if you don't like GaGa's new single, really I won't judge, but stop blaming her, it's not her fault: she wrote a song that isn't up your alley, fine, don't listen to it. If you bought it, get rid of it, change radio stations when it comes on, whatever you need to do, do it, and shut the hell up already.

Late night

Warning this is way random, but some how makes some semblance of sense, maybe it's the lack of sleep.

It's late at night and I'm getting sleepy. I have a scratchy throat and an ache in my left collar bone. I have a homework assignment for my French class this evening that is not technically done, meaning I haven't done it yet. Yesterday's episode of Glee was really cool and the Packers winning the Super Bowl made my day/week so far. I have a geography quiz on Wednesday that I need to study for. Books for classes that unfortunately will not read and discuss themselves. Papers that are even less likely to write themselves then the books are to read themselves. Now, in the time that it took me to type all of this I did not think of people who are in my classes that annoy me, or people who disagree with my social and political viewpoints, or who have religious beliefs that differ from mine. If we all took a moment to look at our own lives and examine everything we need to get done in a day, or what needs to happen this week, or this month, or the next two months, we wouldn't have time for judging people and telling them that they are wrong. This extends beyond the LGBTQ community. People who identify with this label are very whiny about what they don't have. Sure, everyone deserves equal rights, but forming a community and saying "I'm super special awesome, because I'm a boy and I like boys" or "I'm super special awesome because I'm a girl and like girls" "I'm changing my gender to fit my gender identity" give me rights because of these things, simply pushes away the majority. People who identify as some strain of LGBTQ are in the minority. This doesn't mean we need to sit down and shut up, but it does mean we are human. This country was founded on the principals that all humans are born free and equal. We have the unalienable rights of "... life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..."that is why we deserve equal rights, not because we sleep with the same gender or are changing our physical gender: those are the circumstances of our lives. Being LGBTQ is not some great and holy gift, but neither is it a curse: it's a part of human existence, every human existence. As everyone likes to proclaim right now, everyone is special and unique in their own way, no two people are a like. Some of us have amazing talents for performing music and making art, others have extraordinary talents for organization, or can make a trashy apartment into Buckingham Palace, or a bolt of fabric into a beautiful gown, others can communicate with words in writing or speech better than others. Everyone has a unique talent making each of us unique but at the same time normal. But not each of us is as great as the next: if we all could write like Dickens, Austen, Baudelaire, or any of the greats, would we be able to appreciate a great story or poem? If we could all sing beautifully, there would be no record industry or concerts. So the next time you are feeling "normal" or "average," don't bemoan it remember their is something that you are very good at, if I was a cheesy card I'd say you are good at just being you and that makes you special, as tempting as it is to say this..... ah what the heck, you being you makes you special. There is only one me and one you. No photo or carbon copies, when we were made the mold was broken, and thank god for that 'cause one of me is more than enough. If you didn't realize, one person's whole world just stopped revolving around them and started revolving around you, your welcome, now do the same for somebody else.