%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 My primary Writing.com blog. |
|
Logocentric (adj). Regarding words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality (especially applied as a negative term to traditional Western thought by postmodernist critics). Sometimes I just write whatever I feel like. Other times I respond to prompts, many taken from the following places:  "The Soundtrackers Group"  "Blog Harbor" "Blogging Circle of Friends " "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" "JAFBG" "Take up Your Cross Blog Forum" Thanks for stopping by! 
|
This second single off Avril's second album was basically the breakup anthem for my generation for several years. Anytime someone in a relationship broke up, had a bad fight, etc. it was pretty much guaranteed that they were blasting this song in their car or their room for several weeks afterward. For me, this song is reminiscent of the early 2000s emo/pop punk phase in music where a lot of the love songs were angsty and bittersweet, and this song (and the whole album, in fact) have often been compared to musical artists who have the same general style like Paramore, Evanescence, etc. Like her song "I'm With You" from her first album, this was the album from her second that convinced me she was a really, really talented musical artist. She has the pop-punk hits, of course, which are extremely popular and probably what sell most of her albums, but each album also has one of these more thoughtful, contemplative songs on each of her albums too, which show a real depth and sophistication and maturity to her songwriting. And the combination of the two types of songs have been a real recipe for her success over the past twenty years, I think. Because each album contains multitudes, rather than the same flavor of song over and over again.(220 words) |
Until Love Sux was released in 2022, this album - The Best Damn Thing - was hands-down my favorite. It had the most songs on it that I really liked, and it was one of the few albums that I constantly listened to straight through. With most musical artists, I'll listen to specific songs, or put together specific playlists of multiple songs from multiple albums; it's rare for me to love an album so much that I'll just listen to every track without skipping around, but this is definitely one of them. And this song is probably the best known of all the songs on the album. It was also the first single released off the album. This music video is also one of those classics mid-1990s to early-2000s genre of videos where the artist plays multiple characters in the narrative by dressing up differently. In this one she plays both the girlfriend and the girl who wanted to steal the guy, which is both kind of a fun premise and potentially a real psychological issue that's probably best explored in therapy.  I used to listen to this song a lot when I was commuting to and from work, and working late. During the time this album was out, I was working for a small production company that didn't have a lot of staff, so I'd have to handle a lot of different tasks and usually ended up working really late. That place also ended up laying me off, and you can read more about that experience and my current views on company loyalty in a prior entry: "What The Hell" . Anyway, I would often blast this song when I was alone in the office, or when I was driving home late at night because I needed high-energy music to keep me awake. So this song definitely brings back mixed memories of producing a game show pilot and all those late nights spent in the office to make it happen.(331 words) |
Head Above Water was Avril's sixth album, and it came after a five-year hiatus during which she was diagnosed and was struggling with Lyme disease. The album was a bit of a departure from her other albums, but a lot of critics praised the fact that it felt more emotionally raw and vulnerable than her prior works. This song is particularly meaningful to me because the last time I was laid off, one of my wife's coworkers made me a playlist burned onto a CD (those were the days!) of music meant to cheer me up and encourage me, and this was the very first track on that playlist. I actually hadn't even realized that Avril Lavigne had released this album (nor was I familiar with her health struggles at the time), but this song was on repeat in my car for a really, really long time (even long after that stint of unemployment was over). The song now, for me, is a bit of an anthem for anyone who seems overwhelmed with whatever life is throwing at them. I've recommended it to a few other friends over the years, when it seemed like they needed a little something to get them through a tough spot or help them feel seen in their struggles. (215 words) |
Of all the songs on her discography (not including Love Sux, which I've been listening to a lot this year), this is probably the song of Avril's that I listen to the most. Every time it pops up on the radio or a playlist, I listen to it for an extended period of time. It was the lead single off this fourth album of hers, and even though this is ostensibly a love song (or at least a song about relationships), the chorus/refrain is something that I identify with more and more as I get older: All my life I've been good But now I'm thinking, "What the hell" All I want is to mess around And I don't really care about If you love me, if you hate me You can't save me, baby, baby All my life I've been good But, now what the hell What? What? What? What the hell? To me, this song has been more applicable to my job than my personal relationships lately. Disney just laid off another few hundred employees this week; it's the third quarter in a row they've suddenly laid people off with no warning, and it's now been almost two years of constant uncertainty and rolling layoffs as they've sought to streamline the organization. It used to be a company that people felt seen and valued at, and now we all feel like numbers on a balance sheet who are one quarterly earnings call away from getting abruptly called onto a Zoom video call with our boss and HR to be told that the company has eliminated our position to save overhead. Sadly, that makes them just like almost every other company I've worked for in my career. And I've spent my entire professional life working hard, over-delivering, and making a lot of sacrifices for the company's benefit. As have my coworkers, some of which had been at the company twenty-two, twenty-five, in some cases thirty-five years and now suddenly find themselves looking for new jobs at the tail end of their careers without much more than a perfunctory conversation with studio leadership. It definitely gets me into "now I'm thinking 'what the hell'" territory and wondering whether my work is worth the priority I give it in my life. Which is not to say that I'm planning on quitting or completely checking out; but I think the days of not taking my vacations and putting in tons of overtime might be coming to a close in favor of, you know, just putting in my hours and then going home at the end of the day. Anyway, I really enjoy this song because it's often a reminder to take ourselves a little less seriously. Sometimes you really do just have to say "what the hell" and have other people accept you for who you are, for better or worse. That's probably why this song finds its way onto my playlist rotation more often than most songs. (500 words) |
This was the first Avril Lavigne song that really convinced me that she was more than a pop artist. "Complicated" (the first single off her debut album) was obviously a huge hit, and the follow-up single ("Sk8er Boi") was really catchy and a massive hit of course, but this was the song that seemed to have some real emotional resonance behind it. 2002 is also the year when I first started dating my wife and this bittersweet but somewhat optimistic ballad was one that I listened to a lot in those early years when we were navigating our relationship. I'm clearly not the only one for whom this song resonated, because it also gained popularity by being featured on an episode of Scrubs, an episode of Smallville, and in the movie Bruce Almighty. It was also used for a handful of commercials, video games, and other uses... and was included in a movie soundtrack as recently as this year, when it was featured in Deadpool & Wolverine over twenty years later. Apparently I'm not the only one for whom this song really resonated! By the way, if you want to hear a really cool mashup, Yungblud (an artist Avril Lavigne subsequently featured on a future album, presumably at least in part because she discovered this mashup) did a crossover song between this one and Taylor Swift's "Cardigan" for BBC Radio 1 which you can watch here . Both Lavigne and Swift were fans of the mashup.(253 words) |
For this challenge, I wanted to pick an artist that I haven't often featured in my Soundtrackers entries, which meant that a lot of my go-to favorite artists with a discography large enough to support ten song picks (Taylor Swift, The Band CAMINO, etc.) were off the table. I almost went with Linkin Park because I had picked them for my ill-fated "Musicology Anthology" entry this year that never got off the ground, but then I really thought about artists that I've been listening to a lot recently and for some reason Avril Lavigne popped into my head.I used to listen to her music a lot in college (Let Go, Under My Skin, and The Best Damn Thing were all released either during my college years or in my early-to-mid twenties shortly after), and then I kind of lost track of her until a song from a 2019 album caught my attention a few years ago. Then I didn't think much about her again until earlier this year when a song from her 2022 album found its way onto my Spotify playlist and I decided to take a trip back through her discography. I was really surprised to find that she's now released seven studio albums in the past twenty years. This was the song I wanted to pick first for the "Barrel of Monkeys" challenge because it perfectly encapsulates what I really love about her as an artist, which is that she's unapologetically pop-punk and doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon. The whole "I'll never grow up" vibe is something that's easy to claim and sing about in your twenties, but when you're still doing it twenty years later, it has a bit more cache to it. I like the fact that, while she has evolved as an artist, it doesn't matter if you're listening to a song off her 2002 album or her 2022 album; the sound is the same and she knows who she is as an artist.I think I have a particular affinity for this song right now, too, because I'm in the middle of one of those adulting seasons where there's so much to do, so many responsibilities to fulfill, and where life just doesn't seem like much more than repetitive not-very-fun tasks that you have to do because you, you know, an adult with tiny humans that rely on you to provide for them. There's something I deeply empathize with about looking back on your earlier years when your biggest priority in the world was having carefree fun with your friends. I'm really excited for this Barrel of Monkeys challenge this year, and especially to a deeper dive on Avril Lavigne's discography. I plan to take a look at songs both old and new, ones that I listened to on repeat between classes in college two decades ago, and ones that I've discovered and been listening to a lot this year after a period of rediscovery. Thanks for joining me. (501 words) |
| WDC 48-Hour Challenge: Media Prompt | Prompt ▼ This song officially falls in the "WTF did I just listen to" musical genre. I really don't know what to say about a song about disco snails, so I decided to do a little research on where this came from instead. Apparently "Vulfmon" is the solo alias of a musician named Jack Stratton, who also created the funk band called Vulfpeck which has released multiple albums and EPs. While I can't say that funk is a genre I'm particularly interested in or excited about, I do have an appreciation for what this band has managed to accomplish. In particular, there are two accomplishments they're particularly notable for: First (and most recently), they're the first band to sell out Madison Square Garden without the help of a manager or backing label. They ended up recording that concert as a live album and releasing it in 2019. Second (and most impressively), they are also somewhat infamous for exploiting Spotify's royalty structure with their 2014 album Sleepify which is actually an "album" consisting of ten tracks (each approximately 30 seconds long) of complete silence, which they encouraged their fans to listen to on repeat while they slept. They then planned on using the royalties earned from millions and millions of Spotify listens to crowdfund a free public concert for their fans. They ultimately earned just over $20,000 in royalties from the album, although it was subsequently removed from Spotify after a little over a month. Gotta respect the hustle.  (251 words) |
| To qualify for my Watch List every month, the following has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish. Movies  Harold and the Purple Crayon The Monkey King The Sea Beast Ultraman: RisingTelevision The Bear (Season 3) Betrayal: The Perfect Husband Unicorn AcademyOther Critical Role (Campaign 3, Episode 102) Critical Role (Campaign 3, Episode 103)August, if you couldn't tell, was a "mostly watched stuff the kids picked out" kind of month. I can't say that any of the movies really impressed me, and the television was pretty lackluster too. I really love The Bear, and the episode "Forks" from Season 2 is probably one of the best episodes of television I've seen in the past five years, but this season left a lot to be desired. The first two seasons were working toward something (the protagonist coming back and taking over the family sandwich shop after his brother's suicide, and turning that sandwich restaurant into a fine dining establishment, respectively), but the only thing that happened this season was a bit of soul-searching, it seemed like. It was slow because none of the characters seemed to be working toward any kind of goal, and no narrative was developing. There were still some good episodes, for sure, but it was kinda slow going and didn't live up to the hype of the first two seasons, IMHO. One thing I did get back into recently (as also evidenced by my reading, which everyone in the "Book Brothel" is probably tired of hearing about ) was watching the Critical Role webseries, which is a live-play Dungeons & Dragons campaign where the Dungeon Master (DM) and the players are all voice actors. It's easily the most popular live-play tabletop roleplaying game program on the internet (of which there are now many), and I've been watching it to get some ideas for my own campaign about how to structure gameplay. Matthew Mercer is one of the best DMs out there, and it's fun to see how he tells a story and runs a game. I've definitely taken a few tips and tricks from him and have incorporated them into my own home game.TOP PICK: Critical Role |
| "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" | Day 3197 Prompt ▼ The things I tend to pull from real life for my writing tend to be more indirect. I'll get an idea for the subject matter for a story from something I've experienced in real life, or will find inspiration in some other kind of media I've watched or listened to. I read a lot of different types of things and stuff will stick in my head that I'll reference or adapt at some point when the situation calls for it. A lot of writers swear by finding inspiration for characters in real life, either basing characters on people they actually know, or stories that they've experienced in their actual lives, and I can't say I find either a particularly effective writing tool for my own work. I might use a personality trait or quirk that I notice from one place or another, but I've never been the kind of writer who writes down snippets of dialogue overheard out and about in the real world, or take an entire personality wholesale and transplant it into a story. When I write fantasy and science fiction, I definitely look for historical narratives or even current news that I can adapt for an alternate setting. I tend to use those more frequently than characterization because I think fantasy and science fiction are at their best when they're allegories for something in the real world, and it also helps add a familiar framework or structure to what can otherwise be a really hard to relate to pair of genres if they get too weird or "out there." I tend to stay away from friends and family entirely, and that's for a few reasons. First, I don't want them to recognize themselves in the fiction I write (unless I'm intentionally trying to do so with their knowledge and consent). Second, most of my family and friends are just regular people, and I tend to enjoy writing stories about extraordinary circumstances. Realistic, everyday fiction isn't really my thing. And third, I get enough of my family in friends in my real life. Writing fiction for me is an escape, so I generally focus on characters and situations that I don't experience in my everyday life. Overall, I think it's safe to say that we all draw inspiration from real life, whether it's intentional or not. My inspirations just tend to be more of the indirect variety rather than direct lifts from the real world. (407 words) |
| "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" | Day 3190 Prompt ▼ I'm typically the most influenced by two types of people: the ones I really admire, and the ones that really drive me crazy. People that I really admire give me something to aspire to. Over the years, I've found friends, coworkers, religious leaders, family members, etc. to all be huge influences on who I am now. In particular, a former boss and then mentor at work was the first executive who really showed me how to be a supervisor and a leader without being a jerk. My parents also taught me general responsibility and a strong work ethic. My pastor helped shape and better understand my faith. People that drive me crazy can be just as, if not more influential for all the things I've learned not to do. I had two bosses, one of which was an egomaniacal narcissist and the other which was a passive aggressive manipulator, and I learned from both of them how not to manage people and conduct business. I've met plenty of religious people who have shown me how not to live out my faith. Generally speaking, I'm okay with all the influences in my life because they've all shaped who I am today... and I'm pretty okay with who I am today.  Both good and bad influences have formed my view of the world, and how I interact with it. If I didn't have those good and bad times that created those environments and the takeaways I had from them, I don't think I'd be the same person.(257 words) |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
