So Im aware that its been a while since Ive done a note. Well, it feels like it to me, at least.

For some reason I dont really count my synopsis of <i>Audition</i>, and the submission of writing is just copypasta, so the last real note in my mind was written in February. Thats way too long, and Ive got fresh new material for another Epic Rant. Or at least I think I do. I never know how long these things are gonna be because I always write them off the top of my head when I think Ive got enough material to go off on them for a while. So anyway, these will be the latest three in an ongoing series of things I want to yell about. Spoiler warning: theyre gonna be serious topics, but Ill do what I can to be entertaining about it. My first topic is probably gonna be the least serious, but I imagine itll also be the least amusing to read, but whatever. Here goes. It really annoys me that people use gay as a synonym for stupid. What annoys me more is that I know it will fall in the American vernacular alongside dumb and lame. See, neither of those originally meant stupid. Lame means unable to walk and dumb means unable to speak. But because those people are different, and different is bad, they have become utterly synonymous with stupid. Theyre no longer <i>with</i> stupid; they <i>are</i> stupid. I guess people chose those two groups because they could get away with it. I mean, all you have to do against a lame person is run away from them. And dumb people arent exactly the most vocal minority, so its not like they could effectively speak out against it. And so now weve got gay. Once more we equate one of the most defining characteristics of a minority group with being of the lowest intelligence and ridiculousness. Sure, there are people to speak out against it, but Im sure there were people to speak out against lame and dumb being used similarly when they were first being used as derogatory terms. And just as those people failed, so too am I willing to bet that those speaking out against gay will fail. America continues to belittle those who are different, but after going against cripples, they want more of a challenge and are now going against those who can more easily fight back. If/when this falls into the vernacular and no one considers it wrong, theyll move on to another minority group. Why not take on the end boss then? I say if were gonna continue to belittle everyone, we might as well go whole hog and go after black people next. Im sure they wont mind. Interesting side note (interesting to me at least): queer is kinda the opposite in this situation. It once meant merely strange or weird, but now its become entirely synonymous with homosexual. Yay belittling! Alright, Im done with that one. On to pop music. These thoughts occurred to me recently while I was watching a video comparing the Jonas Brothers with various metal groups in terms of musicianship. It occurred to me, while watching the video maker saying this band does everything better than the Jonas Brothers, that they, the Jonas Brothers, arent even meant to be anything substantial. This expanded into pop music as a whole when I realised that many of the things I was thinking about applied to pop music as a whole. The thing that got me really started on this train of thought is that, as I said, pop music isnt meant to be substantial. Nothing about it is substantial; not even the artists themselves. Save Michael Jackson, no pop artist has lasted more than seven years at the most, many failing to remain relevant for more than one album. Want proof? Backstreet Boys. You havent even thought about them for years, and would have continued to not

think about them had I not mentioned their name just now. Indeed, even the Jonas Brothers have mostly faded from the limelight, to be replaced by such filth as Justin Beiber. Worry not though; he too shall fall before the immeasurable face of time. He will cease to be relevant in two years max. Such is the case for many pop artists. And I believe its because their music has no substance to it. Its all the same generic, jumpy, upbeat crap with utterly generic lyrics about love. No, not love: infatuation. Ive got an entire note on love, so I wont go into it here. Just know that pop sings merely about infatuation. Geez, even the subject material of their lyrics is insubstantial. Oh wait, I hear some pop fangirl screaming at me through my computer (I can tell its a girl. Trust me, I can just tell). Shes saying, But what about when they sing about all the problems of the world? Or what about when they sing about the loss of a loved one? Oh, so theyre singing about how they miss their dead dad? Wow, no ones ever done that before. I suppose they just collaborated with every other pop artist in existence to make their lyrics sound exactly like everyone elses even on this subject, did they? But what about when they sing about topical issues: global warming, the war in Afghanistan, etc.? So theyre singing about our problems. Do they have solutions to these problems? No? Well then theyre doing nothing more than complaining in song form. Whats that? Bringing awareness to the subject? Boy youre right; no one had ever heard about global warming before your band sang about them. Neither had they heard about poverty and genocide in Africa, global hunger, and everything else that <i>every</i> pop singer sings about when they want to be topical. You want bands that raise awareness to issues? Listen to Rise Against, The Agonist, Otep, and Heaven Shall Burn. Just like everything else with pop artists, even the topical issues fade with time. Heaven Shall Burn has a song about the injustice of the atomic bombs. And theyre <i>pissed</i> about it. Seriously, those guys alone put to shame any angry song about any perceived injustice. So why is pop sowell, popular, when it is so insubstantial? Well, its actually partially <i>because</i> its so insubstantial. The other part is that the music is upbeat and happy, and so makes the people who listen to it upbeat and happy too, and everyone likes to be happy, right? As for its lack of substance, that too plays a part. It turns out that if you think about pretty much anything with any degree of depth, it turns out that life really sucks, and thats counterproductive to being happy. So how should we deal with this? Should we stay unhappy for a while longer to work on fixing the things that are making you unhappy until theyre fixed, thereby assuring your happiness in that area for the rest of your life? Heck no! Thats way too hard. No, lets just not sing about anything with any depth! People cant be unhappy if they dont think about unhappy things, right? As all our parents taught us (well, those of us who have little siblings at least), if you just ignore whats annoying you, itll stop. That works for everything in real life, right? Yeahno. Although that did work really well to segue into my next and final topic. I basically summarised my feelings about this at the end of last paragraph, but Ill try to go into a little more detail here. In case you couldnt tell by now, Im talking about ignoring problems, or running away from them. This is a <i>huge</i> problem with the world today. Ever since I entered college, Ive had conversation after conversation where running from the problem (hereinafter I will use running from the problem to mean both running from it and ignoring it altogether) is one of the biggest causes of all the

problems being discussed. I used the analogy of our parents telling us to ignore the problem so itll go away already. I was half-joking when I used it, but in all honesty, thats probably part of the problem. Those of us with little siblings (and probably older siblings) know how it is: our siblings are doing something that annoys us, we complain to our parents, and they tell us just ignore them and theyll stop. It does seem like that could explain our current situation of running from our problems now, doesnt it? I dont know if thats actually one of the causes, but it seems like it could be, so I mention it. The problem with this method of thinking is that it almost never works. Whenever my parents said that to methe ignore him and hell stop lineI would always think to myself (and often say aloud) <i>or</i> hell think its okay if I dont tell him to stop and hell continue to do it, probably even more than he already is. This is far more often the case than the scenario of the problem going away if you ignore it. If you break your arm and the bone is sticking out of your arm, are you gonna say to yourself, Oh Ill just ignore that and itll go away on its own? No (well, I would certainly hope not, anyway). Youre gonna go to the hospital and get that thing fixed. So why dont we do the same thing with all our problems? Why do we run from our problems rather than face them and do what we can to fix them? Well, it seems to me that much of it has to do with our culture. We are a country that seeks self-gratification first and foremost. It isnt something that can really be blamed on anything, since humans are selfish by nature, as I have mentioned in a previous Epic Rant. We do whatever we can to make ourselves happy. It doesnt help that the media encourages this behaviour, as it allows them to sell us useless BS that they claim will make us happy. Buy a Snuggie! Then your arms will be both warm <i>and</i> free to use, and you will be happy because of it! Look at these people in our commercials; theyre happy ALL THE TIME! You want to be happy all the time, dont you? Then BUY A SNUGGIE! They tell us these things so that we buy their products, which makes them money, which makes them happy. Unfortunately, pretty much every method of happiness we have is fleeting and temporary. Go ahead: think of what makes you happy. Odds are whatever you thought of is a temporary thing, i.e. it will end at some point. Of course, this might have something to do with the fact that happiness as an entire emotion is a temporary thing, subject to change by the whims of fate and circumstance. It doesnt matter what you do; you cant be happy all the time. So then one might understand why we have so many things that make us happy: because they are temporary, so as soon as one thing stops making us happy, we move onto another. Well what other way is there? If nothing can make us permanently happy, then whats wrong with the things that make us even temporarily happy? The thing is, there <i>are</i> things that can make us permanently happy. But then it is no longer happiness that we feel, but joy. Joy is essentially happiness that will never fade, because the cause of the joy is itself a permanent fixture. This means that nothing on earth can give us joy, as nothing on earth is permanent. But then what is there that gives us joy? Forgive me for preaching, but Jesus gives us joy. It says time and time again in the Bible that when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, He will fill us with the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is Joy. To all my non-Christian friends, Im sure to you it all sounds like generic gospelpreaching, but you have no idea how true those words are. I am a living testament to the Joy of the Spirit. It doesnt matter what happens to me in this life; I will always find joy in everything. Sure, it wont always be sunshine and rainbows, but if you expect that,

then youre still expecting happiness, and that wont happen. Happiness is the superficial manifestation of joy. Joy itself goes much deeper than that. You wont always be happy, but no matter how bad things get, if you have joy, you will find it within yourself if you search deep enough. Okay, so if you dont accept Jesus, then youre pretty much screwed in the joy department, right? Well, not really. Ive found one other thing that brings joy on this earth, and that is love. Real, unconditional love such as I have described numerous times in other notes will provide you with joy. But how can this be? If you love someone, that someone is just as temporary as everything else on this earth. This is true, but its not exactly the person that gives you that joy; it is your love of them. If you truly love someone, you will continue to love them for the rest of your life. It may not exactly take the same form all the time, but it will be there nonetheless. Even if the person should die, your love for them would continue to stay true, and continue to give you joy throughout your life. Im willing to bet that there are other things that can give people joy, but I have yet to discover them. As such, I say for now that only the two aforementioned subjects can provide joy. And if you have joy, then you dont need happiness. The problem is, to obtain the objects that give you joy, youre gonna have to work hard for them. Really hard. Too hard for most people. I believe that the majority of people on this earth have never felt joy, and are thus content with happiness because it is the highest form of that emotion that they have felt. Theyre content with happiness, which is easy to obtain, and so shirk away from anything that might give them any sense of greater happiness because itd be hard. To bring this back to the original topic I addressed four paragraphs ago about people running from their problems, most people will only see the difficulty in the process, not the joy of the end result. Sure, there are problems in peoples lives, the mere absence of which would not alone bring them happiness, and so they just run from those problems by distracting themselves with other things that do make them happy. What most people dont seem to realise, though, is that if you work on solving a problem and succeed in overcoming it, the sense of satisfaction alone would bring you a sense of happiness for a long time to come. But no, that would require a lot of hard work and unhappiness along the way, so well just continue to look the other way. After all, if we ignore a problem, itll just go away on its own. Our parents would never lie to us. Im gonna close with an analogy that Ive used before in regards to this subject: our problems are like zombies. We can run from them all we want, but they will continue to chase after us because its all they know to do. Eventually we will wear ourselves out with running; and the zombies, being zombies, will never tire, and they will catch up to us eventually. It doesnt matter how long it takes; they will find us and kill us given enough time. Sometimes they do worse than kill us; they turn us into zombies that ourselves become problems for other survivors. The only way to fully rid yourself from a zombie infestation is to fight back. Only by destroying all of them can you truly free yourself from the zombie menace. Just remember to double tap.