#37 If It Makes You Less Sad I’ll Write My First Blog Post In Over A Week…what, that makes you more sad?

#37 The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot by Brand New

I was a big Brand New fan from almost the beginning of their rise to fame, and by fame I don’t mean real fame, just fame as in having a few million people know who you are but not having even a single percent of the awareness of the populace that Lady Gaga or even Justin Bieber (and now Rebecca Black) have – by the way, concerning Rebecca Black and how people like to make fun of her song Friday, please keep in mind that she didn’t write it, and that it was written and produced by Clarence Jey and Patrice Wilson, so lay off Rebecca Black, she’s only 13, and start making fun of those assumedly adult hacks – I remember recording the music video for Jude Law And A Semester Abroad and watching it over and over again. It wasn’t too interesting of a music video, I just loved the song. It did that thing that I hate in videos where it shows the band playing their instruments. I’d rather just have a story in the music video. Showing the band playing their instruments seems like a cop out to me. I didn’t mind it back then, but now it’s been totally fucked out. But I remember that video being the first time I saw a guitarist do that thing where they sling the guitar around their body and then catch it and start playing again. I was completely amazed by that.

The point is that I loved Brand New, and I had bought their first album, Your Favorite Weapon, and loved that, but then my family no longer had cable, and therefore no longer had MTV, and I didn’t have the internet, so I was never aware of when bands came out with new albums, so I was completely unaware of Brand New’s second album until like two years after it had came out. And the first time I became aware of it was through this song, which when I first heard I didn’t even realize it was Brand New.

  One day it came on my favorite radio station, 94.7 NRK, which I don’t listen to anymore because listening to the radio is a hassle, and a couple seconds into the song I could tell that I was going to like it so I jumped over to the radio and hit the record bottom on the built in cassette player – Yep, my radio came with a cassette player, jealous? As I assume most people my age did, I used to always record songs off the radio because it was cheaper than CDs and illegally downloading songs off the internet ironically could only be done by the people who had money and could afford computers – I say that like this was 20 years ago and computers were the size of a two door Honda, but in reality it was only like six or seven years ago. So I loved the song immediately and would listen to it a lot, but never knowing it was sung by Jesse Lacey because it sounded a lot different than how he had sung on Your Favorite Weapon. It was only weeks, or perhaps months, later when Jamie Cooley was talking about the song before she played it and had mentioned it was by Brand New. Then I quickly did the math that it was a song I didn’t know by Brand New and that they must have a new album out and I quickly bought the album, Deaj Entendu (translated to Already Heard), even though I didn’t have much money back then.

I kind of liked that about the past. Lately whenever I want to buy a CD I just buy the CD and don’t really think about it much in financial terms. Although nowadays I pretty much only buy CDs of bands I love, partly to help support them financially, although I suppose if I wanted to help them financially I should really stop buying so many of the CDs used. It’s just a cheap habit I can’t quite kick. The point is that back in the olden days I never had any money because I was just a dumb kid (whereas now the ‘kid’ part can be dropped) so the only time I could get CDs was for Christmas or my birthday or with the little money I would save up, so every time I got a CD it would mean a lot to me. Not to mention that my music collection was so much smaller, and there weren’t ways like Youtube, or Pandora, or Lastfm.com to listen to and find new music for free, so I would listen to the CD over and over again. So I don’t get that connection with new music that I used to, except with the bands I love of course, where I’ll try not to listen to new singles and just wait until the CD comes out and then buy a physical copy of the CD and listen to it over and over again throughout the day just like I used to do in the past.

I should probably talk about this song, because lyrically it’s such a beautiful song. And I really do mean beautiful. I don’t just want to get it drunk, fuck the shit out of it, and then not call it back the next day. I want to slowly open up to it, and caress it, and make passionate love to it, and then not call it back the next day – I assume I will have moved on to a new beautiful song by then. Let me show you some of my favorite lyrics from the song.

“And if it makes you less sad, I’ll take your pictures all down. Every picture you paint, I will paint myself out.”

“And if it makes you less sad, we’ll start talking again. You can tell me how vile, I already know that I am.”

#56 The Gin War by Cassino

Musically speaking one of the toughest questions I can ask myself is if it was worth Northstar ending in order for the band Cassino to arise? I ask that because Cassino was first brought about when Nick Torres (lead singer and song writer of Northstar) and Tyler Odom (Guitarist and backup singer of Northstar) decided to team up again and try something a little different. Had they only teamed up for Sounds of Salvation, which technically was the only Cassino album they did together, then the answer is easy, I want Northstar still together. But once you throw in Cassino’s second release, Kingprince, which was done without Tyler, the question becomes much tougher.

Fair warning my friends, if I may call you that, which I’m thinking you’d rather not like to think of me as your friend so let’s try that again. Fair warning person who drunkenly stumbled upon this blog at three in the morning while looking for porn, this post probably isn’t going to be as humorous as previous posts have attempted to be because it will contain some actual information, and as most poor writers I too have trouble blending insight with entertainment. Mind you when I say information I don’t mean anything useful, I just mean you might learn a little bit about a couple bands, which is vastly different from how I’ve done this in the past where I rarely mention anything about the band and instead find a way to link the song to masturbation. My personal favorite being a couple posts back where I somehow went from Taking Back Sunday’s You Know How I Do to Peewee Herman jerking off in a movie theater.

Nick Torres of Cassino, but I can tell he's playing a Northstar song there

If I had to answer the question which I posed to myself at the start of the blog, and I’ve just decided I do have to answer it, I would choose for Northstar to have never ended. As much as I love Cassino’s Kingprince album Northstar has quickly become one of my all time favorite bands, still with two songs left on this countdown, whereas this will be the only Cassino song, but I would also strongly suggest listening to Maddie Bloom and Cannonball off the Kingprince album, and The Old Year and New Jerusalem off the Sounds of Salvation album.

As I was doing research for this song, which is something I rarely do before writing because inevitably it will somehow lead to a hot or cute new girl discovery and that will lead to a two hour search of the perfect thing to jerk off to before I realize I’ve wasted too much time and then just jerk off to something I’ve already jerked off to many times before and then I feel shamed and after shame always comes laughter, or vice versa, it really doesn’t matter just as long as they both fit in there somewhere, which is also great advice to keep in mind if you ever consider direction porn. But I wanted to look up just exactly how many members of Northstar were involved with Cassino because I was only certain of Nick Torres but I thought there was another guy, which was Tyler Odom but he was only on the first Cassino album, and then I was curious what happened to him after that.

As I was doing this search I started to realize that bands are a lot like sports teams. The best example I can think of is Taking Back Sunday – and they’ll be brought up for a third time shortly. I’m on Taking Back Sunday’s Wikipedia page and it says that they’ve had 11 members, not to mention that two of their current members, John Nolan and Shaun Cooper, were once members in the past. It’s not unoften in sports that a player will establish his career with one team then eventually move on, usually not accomplishing much, and then return to the team he first found glory with for his last couple of years. But what reminds me of sports teams is that these musicians will bounce around from band to band, much like many athletes will bounce around from team to team. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when a couple of notable musicians turned up in one place.

If my research would have spiraled into a two hour long jerk session this is what would have set it off

While finding out what Tyler Odom had been up to I shockingly discovered that he was currently in a band called Destry with Michelle Nolan DaRosa, who was the coish-lead singer in the band Straylight Run and featured on some tracks on Taking Back Sunday’s first album, and also the aforementioned Shaun Cooper who was in Straylight Run and on Taking Back Sunday’s first album, and is now apparently back with Taking Back Sunday. It was odd to see how a musician I didn’t really know much about except for that he was part of one of my favorite bands and another band I like a lot could turn up in a band with two members I was pretty familiar with.

I don’t really have much to say about the band Destry as of yet considering I just discovered them today. I’ll link to a place you can buy their music for cheap, and by cheap I guess that depends on how cheap you think ‘name your price’ is. You can also listen to the songs, probably over and over again, without ever having to pay for them, but I’m not sure why anyone would do that when they’re ‘name your price’ cheap.

You know someone is either incredibly kind or incredibly desperate for quick money when you ask them how much something is and they say, ‘whatever you want to give I’ll take.’ Also you should probably stay away from that phrase when shopping for sexual favors. A ‘name your price’ handjob isn’t going to be anywhere near as good as the $13 ones Ke$ha is giving (if people don’t click that link in the next two days that joke is going to make no sense at all) as if any of my jokes ever make any sense.

“I wish I had you in my lungs, I’d blow you up and block the sun. And save everyone from this brilliant light we’ve won.”

#67 From The Hips by Cursive

“I’m at my best when I’m at my worst. I’m at worst when it’s not rehearsed. I don’t wanna know the goddamn words. I don’t wanna have to spell it out. Don’t wanna mumble what I’m trying to say. I wanna scream it from my foaming mouth. Shoot out the lights and ride away”

I’ve been known to be not too shabby when I’m not rehearsed, but I’m definitely not at my best, or in this case at my worst, which in this case is actually my best, or something. In my Speech class for the first couple of speeches I would wake up the morning before the speech, write out something, record me saying it onto my mp3 player and then listen to it about five or six times on my walk to school trying to memorize as much of it as I could. My first two speeches turned out pretty well, but then when it was time for the ten minute speech instead of the 5 minute speeches this routine of waking up an hour and a half before the speech didn’t work because this particular speech required some prior research and a Power Point presentation, and that pretty much went disastrously. However, for the final speech I really didn’t want to come to class and figured I’d just take a C for the overall grade, but about five minutes before the class something happened and I just decided I had to go, not to better my grade, but just to prove I could do it. So with nothing prepared I’d threw some shit in my backpack and decided that my demonstration speech would be about playing poker and I went in totally unprepared not knowing what I was going to say or what jokes I would throw in – because in almost everything I do I have to throw in jokes, this is why I’ll never be successful in anything – and the speech went great. So I guess sometimes when I’m not rehearsed everything still works out fine. Although I definitely advise future Quentin against it. I doubt he’ll listen though.

“I’m at my worst when I’m at my best. I’m at my best when I’m trying to look and think and talk and sing and read and write like all the rest. We’re all just trying to play our rolls. In a play that runs ad nauseam. I hate this damn enlightenment. We were better off as animals, right?”

I guess I’m expected to answer the question the singer has posed, right? In the context of the song I’m guessing the reason for us being better off as animals is because back when we were animals there was much less thinking and much more fucking. That’s not to say there’s not a lot of fucking going on while we’re humans – I say while because who is to say there isn’t some kind of next evolutionary step in our development in this Universe, a popular theory of which could be that Aliens are just us from the future after that next step in our evolution and they traveled back in time to visit us, and by the way, I don’t believe in God, but technically that theory doesn’t really interfere with religious belief. I think for certain we humans don’t have as much sex as other animals because other animals don’t have authority figures that punish rapists. I’ve watched some Animal Planet, and a lot of it doesn’t seem like consensual sex. Also most of us human’s frown upon incest, whereas before my cat got neutered he tried to fuck his sister cat no less than seven times a night. Am I ashamed to be the owner of a cat who tried to fuck his sister cat? Yes, very much so. Am I more ashamed to be the owner of that same cat who ate approximately seven ounces of tin foil in one sitting? Yes, yes I am.

“We’re at our best when it’s from our hips. From our hips we don’t give a shit. It just feels good and that’s no sin. It’s the only way to feel alive. The closest thing to being born again. And when baby comes it’s job well done. Roll in the hay, oh roll around the sun.”

Olivia Thirlby has absolutely nothing to do with this post; I just think she's cute.

Of course ‘from the hips’ is referring to sexual intercourse between the human species (sounds hot when you put it that way). So wait, I’m a virgin, and according to this song the only way to feel alive is sex, so post hoc ergo propter hoc I’m living but I’m not feeling alive – I have no idea if I used that saying right, I mean I’m sure I didn’t use it right, but I’m not even sure if I was anywhere near using it without sounding retarded, and I use the word retarded because I still maintain that mentally challenged people don’t get offended when people use retarded in a negative way, in fact I’d like to do a study about that. The point is I need to find a way to feel alive, and unfortunately the only way for that involves a whore, and I don’t have whore kind of money. Or at least not whore with all her teeth kind of money. I guess I’ll just continue living without feeling alive. At least until that mail order bride gets shipped over. I wonder what the shipping and handling is on a mail order bride?

“We’re at our worst when it’s from our lips. From our lips we caused a rift, and the world has fallen in. From babble to ball room brawls. Our words have formed a death sentence. And I wish that we had never talked. Our hips said it all.”
That’s what I’m talking about. Ladies, zip up those lips and unleash that clit. I’m of course kidding. But imagine how successful marriages would be if they involved nothing but sex. Nothing good ever comes from talking, aside from conflict resolution of course. But I’m sure sex can do everything and more that talking can do. It’s like ‘cum on my tits if you think I should take the promotion and we should move, or if you want me to keep this job and stay here cum on my face.’ See, normally that’d lead to some big argument about her wanting to take the job and move but him wanting to stay, but now he gets to tell her what he wants without starting a huge argument, and she has cum on her face, so everyone wins. Yep, I can’t believe I wrote this paragraph either.

#68 Lapse by Envy On The Coast

True story: I just dropped my ipod on the floor three times in a span of ten seconds trying to figure out how to lie down comfortably on the edge of my bed. I’ve dropped this bad boy a bunch, but luckily unlike my friend Chris I have not ever dropped it in the toilet. Luckily for him his mp3 player still works, with the caveat of not being able to turn it on or off. I’m not exactly sure how that works out for him, but it’s not too terrible because he’s still able to use it….when not trying to sell it to his friends at discount prices.

I’m surprised I haven’t dropped my ipod in the toilet yet because almost every single time I take a dump, which to me sounds more unpleasant than saying pooping or shitting, I take my ipod with me. Little known fact: I usually don’t make it through one song before I’ve completed my mission, as I refer to dumping as. Of course part of my mission doesn’t include washing my hands. That’s not to say I don’t wash my hands, I just like to include it separately as a post mission task to make it feel special.

“Oh sweet chemical predicament. Can’t stop, can’t hide the evident. Predisposed to forget the best part, a story where the hero dies without regard.”

My mind isn’t working right at the moment so I can’t really think of what to write about the song so I’m just going to write about how my mind isn’t working until my mind warms up and starts to work, and once it does you can rest assure that all of this gibberish will be edited out, except for the fact that you’re clearly reading it right now meaning it wasn’t edited out and actually I never once intended to edit out a single word of this, however I did misspell gibberish so I had to correct that, but I maintain that it should start with a j because that’s how it’s said, unless all these years I should have been pronouncing it with a g sound. Oh God, have I been mispronouncing gibberish all these years? I’m so embarrassed. Actually I can’t really recall a time I ever really used the word gibberish, but the few times I have you can be certain I said jibberish.

“Oh sweet divine predicament. Can’t hide, I can’t chance the evident. I’m predisposed to trust a photograph, to portray the way you used to laugh.”

Kind of sad when you get to that point in life where a memory is so old you have to use photographs to help your memory recall things. Sometimes I think vision is the greatest of the senses, but perhaps unfairly so. I would say in most cases vision is the first used sense, and because of that it starts making these impulse guesses of how other senses are going to interpret the thing the person is viewing, which very well could change how the senses works, for better or worse. So when I look at a plate of food that looks like a pile of shit I assume it’s going to smell like shit, but perhaps when I smell it it actually smells a lot better than shit. But is that the case only because I had set the expectation of its smell so low? No, it’s probably not that way at all. What made me say that vision is the greatest is because whenever I look at a picture of some girl I used to love I always get these strong emotions that I don’t have when I’m just thinking about some girl I used to love. But maybe that’s just because I like looking at boobies? I don’t know. I feel this paragraph was a waste of space.

“Sweet chemical indifference. I can’t stop, can’t change the evident. Predisposed to perpetual sickness, I refuse to let you all be witness.”

I really like the way that line sounds in the song, however I’m super tired and super lazy at the moment so I don’t really want to write about it. I’d prefer just to lie here and slowly die for the night, because after all isn’t that what sleeping basically is, just dying for the night? (No, scientifically that is not at all what sleeping is.) Good night to the few of you that are reading this. I have the feeling that you aren’t going to sleep yet, but I still want you to know that shortly after writing this sentence I fell asleep, with my feet spread apart on a big pink doggie food holder bin filled with cat food, my headphones blazing far too unpopular music far too loudly on my far too deaf ears, and one hand down my pants and the other waving down a taxi as I’m dreaming about being in that horrible Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah movie, I believe it was called Taxi.

Post note: I actually didn’t fall asleep after writing that. I stayed up far too late, but I’m not too certain what I did. Is it bad if I can’t remember what I did less than 24 hours ago? Most certainly masturbating was involved, but I can’t be certain of that, can I?

#70 Logan To Government Center by Brand New

“Consider this a letter that I never sent. However inconsiderate it seems. Do you still consider me…consider me the boy you laughed with, or you learned to live without?…I suck, I know I’m late, I know you waited.”

I’ve probably sang the beginning of this song as much as I’ve ever sang the beginning of any song. I love the way it flows. The triple use of consider and then the fourth in the word inconsiderate I find great. I find it enjoyable to often repeat the same word multiple times very close to each other, and often it’s done subconsciously – although the choice to use often twice just now was very conscious – and it very well could have been established in my head as a pleasant thing to do because of my love of this song, which I’ve sang the beginning of many, many times over about the last eight years.

Also I say “I suck, I know,” a lot. Every now and then I’ll throw in the ‘I’m late, I know you waited’ part, but only as an inside joke to myself or if it’s appropriate to the situation. But usually now when I say “I suck, I know” it’s done without consciously trying to reference the song. I think this happens a lot with me from the earlier albums of Brand New, Dashboard Confessional and Taking Back Sunday because they were the CDs I owned before I had the internet and I would just listen to them over and over again. I think it makes sense that some of the lyrics would be built into my now natural dialogue. Some thing like, “you wouldn’t make me not alone,” seems like something I would say, but of course that’s probably only because I’ve sang the line from this song about a million times.

#73 Company by An Horse

I like An Horse. I don’t really know how I’m supposed to pronounce their name. Seems easy enough, but for some reason I can never stop saying it like ‘ann’ horse, rather than saying the ‘an’ as if it were the same as saying an elephant’s penis. I don’t know why I had to throw in the penis part. I suppose it just felt right. Yep, an elephant’s penis felt right to me.

According to my Lastfm account I’ve listened to An Horse 368 times, which isn’t bad considering they only have about 12 songs. 368 listens is enough for 32ed place, and I wasn’t aware that I’ve listened to 97 bands 100 or more times, although a couple of those are podcasts, namely The Adam Carolla podcast which is placed right behind An Horse with 366 listens, even though I’ve actually listened to it probably about 100 more times than that. What’s say we learn a little bit about An Horse.

The one on the left is...um...Tegan...maybe.

An Horse is a two-piece Alternative Rock band from Brisbane Australia with a fantastic lead singer who I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a lesbian. Aside from her short hair cut lastfm has Tegan and Sara as similar artists. I’m still confused on what the deal with Tegan and Sara is? Firstly are they really both lesbians? And are they really sisters? And if yes to both of those than are they lesbian sisters together? Chris, I need you to refresh my memory on this. While on the subject of the best, and possibly only, lesbian sister band, I think Tegan has a better voice, but I’d much rather do Sara because I think she’s less butch, and with my little sexual experience (i.e. none) I need to find the few women out there less butch than I.

There will be two songs on this list from An Horse, but there very well easily could have been three if I included Postcards, which I almost did. For awhile I was debating which song I liked better between Postcards and Company, and in the end Company won the battle by a long shot, and here’s way.

The word ‘cunt’ is in the song. At about the two minute and fifty-second mark Kate Cooper sings, “I like to keep my cards so close. You like to keep that cunt so long.” I don’t know what keeping a cunt long means, but I love the use of the word in almost any sense. I guess I love it because I fucking hate how there are taboo words we’re not supposed to say. Words shouldn’t automatically be bad. It should all be based on connotation. What’s worst, saying to a person, “I hate you and I want you to die,” or “bitch you”? Aside from not even knowing what ‘bitch you’ really means, it’s obvious that even if it’s meant to call them a bitch it’s not as bad as telling that person you hate them and want them to die. Even if it was ‘you fucking bitch’ that wouldn’t be as bad. I don’t understand the absurdity behind some words just being off limit and forbidden – I’ll address the word nigger in a minute and why I wrote it out in full instead of saying ‘the n-word’. We sort of understand connotation in nudity. If it’s a realistic painting of a nude woman then it’s considered art and children across America without cable or the internet can jerk off to it on PBS. But if it’s Angelina Jolie walking around nude in Gia, even if it’s in black and white which is considered artsy, then it has an R rating and kids can’t see it until they’re old enough to realize they can buy a ticket to Yogi Bear and then sneak into Burlesque, even though there aren’t any nude boobies in that because it’s only PG-13, which I’m very disappointed about because I really want to see Christina Aguilera’s nude boobies, or at least a vaguely graphic sex scene with a hot up and coming actor…and I’ll have you know that it was only after I wrote ‘up and coming’ that I realized the innuendo, so I should receive no credit for it, whether good or bad.

Now to the most controversial word, nigger – by the way, any girl who thinks cunt is just as defamatory to women as nigger is to black people should have their intestines removed through their cunt. Normally I wouldn’t even write the word nigger out, but since I’m trying to make a point and I’m not using the word nigger in an insulting way I feel it’s fine to write it out in full – although if I were speaking this out loud I’d probably say n-word instead of nigger. Also what good does saying n-word instead of nigger do? I think Louis C.K. has a bit about this in one of his many acts. When you say the n-word sure you’re not saying nigger, but everyone knows the word you mean and they’re thinking it in their head. The only reason you wouldn’t say a word is if a person was around who didn’t know the word and you didn’t want them to learn it, like a child. But what’s the point of saying n-word instead of nigger or the f-word instead of fuck if everyone around knows exactly what you mean?

Really though, if you think there’s a difference between saying n-word and nigger than you’d have to think there’s a difference when you use them in a negative way, so you’d be saying that a person saying ‘you stupid nigger’ is worse than saying ‘you stupid n-word’. Really, do you think there’s a difference between the two? If so please state how. To me they’re exactly just as horrible, except the second one is a bit confusing because the person clearly doesn’t like black people since the person referred to the black person as the n-word, but at the same time the person said the n-word instead of nigger, which means the person has some kind of weird moral compass that apparently allows the person to hate black people but not use ‘bad language’. The n-word and nigger are just as bad. You know how I know this? Because they both mean the same thing.

All that being said, nigger is the one word I can understand why people are hesitant to say. I don’t agree with black people being offended solely by the use of it, because I think nothing by itself should be offensive, but rather how it’s used should determine its offensiveness. But I get that the word in the past, and still in some parts [mostly to the south], the word was used to put down black people, and because people are easily offended it’s easy to see how black people could be offended by the use of that word even if instances when it’s not being used offensively. And after that being said, I don’t think the n-word should be used in place of nigger. I think if a person is going to use the word nigger, hopefully not in a negative way but in a teaching way – I could put a horribly fucking horrible joke here but I won’t because even though I don’t believe in Hell in case it does exist I’d like not to burn in it’s most fiery section – then the person should just say nigger, because as I’ve pointed out the n-word and nigger are the same thing, so when teaching students about history or when reading a book or watching a movie or such it makes no sense to use the n-word instead of nigger.

I hope any black person, or person in general, wasn’t offended by my overuse of nigger, and understands that I wasn’t trying to be offensive in any way to any one – except when I told women they should have their intestines pulled out through their cunt, that was pretty offensive and was sincerely meant to be offensive to any women, or actually any man too, who thinks the word cunt is worse than the word nigger. I would hope that you’d at least give my argument consideration in that words should only be considered bad depending on their connotation. That being sad (that’s the third that’s been said) I want to make sure people remember something was just said (nice) I don’t think the word nigger needs to exist, unfortunately it’s a part of history and can’t be avoided, and with racists and rappers – the only time they’ll ever be lumped together – I don’t see the word nigger being eliminated from the vocabulary, especially considering I used it 25 times in this post.

Worst words in order: 1) Nigger 2) Fag/faggot 3) I guess cunt, but I’d have to do more research. By the way, can someone explain to me why cunt is offensive to women? A good explanation, not just ‘it’s demeaning to women’, but rather why it’s demeaning to women. What’s its historical context? Maybe I should look that up. But first I need to take a shower because I feel so dirty after saying nigger so much. By the way, that’s why I think it’s the worst word ever. Because it’s the only word I feel weird about saying even when in the most tame way possible.

#74 This Bitter Pill by Dashboard Confessional

As I’ve made my way down one quarter of this list I’ve noticed that there haven’t been any Dashboard Confessional songs yet, which I find odd because as my previous favorite band I know they have a good number of songs on this list, eight to be exact. It turns out when I originally rated each song, after listening to over 120 of them, all eight of the Dashboard Confessional songs that made the top 101 were no lower on the list than 43 – lower being higher as in having a lower number but higher ranking. I think the longer I’ve known the song the harder it is for me to accurately assess it’s spot on the list, because I give favor to songs I’ve known longer, which I think is okay, but only to a certain extent. I’ve known Madonna’s Like A Virgin practically my whole life, but that song certainly isn’t appearing on the list. Mostly because it reminds me I’m still a virgin at 23. But also because it makes me dance in the most horrendously scandalous way.

The end of this song makes not only for a great ending of a song, but a great ending to a very good album with a very good title, The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most. I think it’s actually the only Dashboard Confessional album title I like. In order it would go The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most, The Shade Of Poison Trees, The Swiss Army Romance, Dusk And Summer, and last would be A Mark A Mission A Brand A Scar. Interesting to me, but not to you, the three titles I like most all start with ‘The’ which I’m usually not in favor of. Having said that I think I would enjoy each of those titles more if the ‘the’ wasn’t in them.

I think to end this exceedingly boring post I’ll name off some of the places that I fear the most.

Guantanamo Bay. Prison full of well endowed black men, or well endowed men of any color really. Any college math class. An alternate universe where the only TV shows are The O’Reilly Factor and Glee. A gym locker room filled with old men. A gym locker filled with male hating body building lesbians. My mother’s vagina. Gas station bathrooms. Poop factories (what are those?). And dreams where I almost get laid but then don’t.

#75 Surprise, Surprise by The Starting Line

Oh my God, I’m so tired. I’ll have to finish this later. I know I haven’t even started it, but still I feel you should know that I had plans of starting it earlier than I did. I can barely keep my eyes open, so writing this will have to wait until after I fall asleep watching that horrible show that is The Hills. I know the horrible show of today is Jersey Shore, but I’m about four years behind on the times so I haven’t made it to the horribleness of today’s culture yet, but instead just started watching shows like the hills and listening to music like James Blunt. I can’t wait for two years from now when I can finally start listening to Katy Perry, and by listen I mean pretend to listen while I watch her boobs bounce, which reminds me.

Okay, maybe a select few guys are looking at her mouth.

I was watching this Proactive commercial with her in it [Proactive being the acne cream that apparently all the big stars use] and she was talking about how she had all this acne near her mouth and how that’s where the microphone is so everyone was looking there, and then I immediately paused the screen, laughed, stopped masturbating, and said, “I’ve got news for you darling, no one is staring at your mouth, everyone is focused on those two fun bags about to fall out of that Barbie sized dress you’re wearing.” And then I quipped, “Take that, Bruce Valance.” And then I wondered who Bruce Valance is.

While writing that I missed a huge Heidi and Lauren fight. Thanks a lot writing, you made me miss more drama between spoiled brats.

So I guess I have to finish writing this even though it was started two days ago. Yeah, so that nap I was going to take was actually a short nap, for me – only two hours – but for whatever reason I didn’t get back to writing. I think I know the reason, but it’s personal, so I’d rather not get into it – I actually do get into it a little in another post I’m not sure if I’ll post, wait, if I don’t post it should I still refer to it as a post? I guess I’m just going to mention a few things about the song and that’ll be it for the post. You ever think about how much better ‘that’ll’ sounds than ‘that will’? Say it. Go on, just say it. There you go. That’ll sounded so much better, right? I love when you guys agree with me.

“I’ll let you go call all your friends, “Oh my God! Let me describe to you this guy, his name is Ken, he’s in this band that writes such awful songs about me all the time.” You’re goddamn right!”

The girl on the left is cute as hell and nearly perfect. The girl on the right just has big boobs.

That’s my second favorite part of the song. I love that he makes no bones about writing awful songs about her. And not only that, but he doesn’t just acknowledge it, he’s emphatic about it. I’ve mentioned before that somewhere around 90% of everything I do is motivated by my desire to prove something to a girl, particularly girls who don’t like me anywhere near as much as I like them. I was once really depressed one night because this girl I loved had put up a new picture of her and her boyfriend (boyfriend at the time that this, but that was like 3 ex’s ago) and they looked all lovey dovey or some crap and I just hated it and stared at it for minutes (creepy, I know) and was super depressed and then I said, ‘fuck this, I’ll show them,’ even though I’m pretty sure the guy had, and has, no idea who I am. And what proceeded was one of the most productive nights of my life. And that’s when I decided that in order to be successful in life I needed to print out four copies of that picture and hang one on each wall in my room so I’d constantly be motivated. I of course didn’t do that because it’d be creepy, and also I determined that knowing myself that kind of motivation would quickly turn to depressive suicidal contemplations, which as we all know are counterproductive…unless you’re trying to commit suicide, which I don’t condone by the way.

“All be your friend in hell, until then I despise you. And I probably always will. I can’t afford to make another mistake like you.”

That’s the beginning of the chorus, but it’s the last time you hear the chorus and one important word has been changed. It was previously, ‘I can’t afford to make another mistake like this.’ I love the change to ‘you’ and how he yells it to make sure she knows the mistake wasn’t just ‘this’ but that it was specifically ‘you’, you being her. Also I like the idea of enemies on Earth being friends in Hell. “Listen Jill, I know you fucked my best friend, not once, not twice, but 46 times. And I know I hated you, and said some pretty awful things to you, that you deserved by the way. And I wrote all those horrible songs to make you feel bad. And on your wedding day when the Priest asked if anyone had any objections I stood up and objected on account that backstabbing whores shouldn’t be allowed to marry. But I say we put all that behind us now, and just be friends again. I mean this is eternity in Hell afterall, why not enjoy it?”

#76 MakeDamnSure by Taking Back Sunday

“I just wanna break you down so badly, while I trip over everything you say. I just wanna break you down so badly, in the worst way. I’m gonna make damn sure that you can’t ever leave. No, you won’t ever get too far from me.”

I don’t know if this kind of psychological thinking goes on in the heads of jackasses when they’re being dickheads to their girlfriends, but I think the situation where a guy, or I suppose it’s possible it could be a girl, breaks down their significant other to the point where they no longer feel like they could be without them happens a lot more than on rare occasions. I’ve seen it a few times in real life where one of my jerk friends is dating a sweet girl and I can’t for the life of me understand what she sees in him. My first thought is that he must have a huge penis to match his huge ego. My second thought is a lot more macabre, and that her parents were mean to her so the only kind of love she knows is the mean kind of ‘love’. My third thought was horribly disgusting and I wouldn’t dare write it here, but if you email me I’d be glad to share it with you. And no it wasn’t rape, but a little too close.

I don’t get the whole thing where guys put down their girls while they think their self is the greatest thing on earth. First off if the guy is so great why is he dating a girl who he keeps calling dumb? (Because she has big breasts?) Ah yes, big breasts concur all. But not in this scenario, because she’s not really dumb, he’s just calling her dumb because he’s a jerk. Sometimes the girl catches on to this and leaves the guy before it gets to deep. But far too many times the girl is pulled in by the gravity of the guy’s massive jackassholery.

I like to go the other way. I’ve mentioned it before and it was just as true then as it is now, but I’ll tell a girl a million ways she’s wonderful, never lying, and tell her a million ways I’m horrible, sometimes in jest but mostly just good old fashion self deprecation, and then explain to her how she deserves much better than me, which is probably true. You know what happens next of course. She finds a guy much better than me. Actually no, I disagree. She finds a guy much worse than me, usually one of those jerks who puts her down, but talks ever so highly of himself. I’ve learned the hard way – by watching hours and hours of Jersey Shore – that the douche bag, cocky guy will get a million times more girls than the sweet guy who’s always complimenting the girl – I’ve actually never watched an entire episode of Jersey Shore, and that’s actually the best thing I could ever say about myself.

People buy into the bullshit these cocky egomaniacs say about themselves. I fucking can’t stand it, and it’s most of the reason I will always be very self deprecative even when I don’t particularly believe it, and that’s part of the reason I will spend a good portion of my life alone, with annoying baby kitties who always pee on my stuff. No matter what you say if you say it enough people will start to believe it. I’m convinced of this. And a person would much rather be with a person who considers their self great than a person who considers their self crap. Because if that person is with the person who is great, even though it’s total bullshit and that guys a jackass, – no one particular in mind, expect for the fact that I have someone precisely particular in mind – then they’re great by association. Whereas why would they want to be with the person who considers their self not so great, because that would mean they’re not so great either.

If only there were some kind of middle ground where a guy would think highly of himself while also being ever so sweet to the girl? But alas, we do not live in fairy tales.

The Icarus Account’s Sunshine and Rain EP Review Part two (a semblance of reviewing actually takes place)

I was having trouble writing this so I decided to erase every single word and start from scratch. I’m making it sound more dramatic than it really was. It was only 87 words, but I really enjoyed that Dharma and Greg joke, and to think no one will ever get to see it really eats at the soul I don’t have. However the day has not been a complete loss. I figured out a way to warm up my feet. I shall sit on my socks. I will let you know how it turns out later.

This is going to be an unconventional review of sorts. There’s a very good chance by the end you will have learned nothing about any of the four songs on the EP, but at least I will have linked you to the songs and hopefully you’ll have listened to at least one or two and share your thoughts with me, or at least for no other reason than being bored you could call me an idiot, even if you really enjoy the songs. It’s not that hard. Just write the three words “You’re an idiot’, click ‘post comment’ and voila, I get to know I’m an idiot, and you might get some enjoyment because people tell me it’s very pleasurable to make fun of me. So if you get nothing else for this post at least listen to some good music and call me an idiot.

The first song on the EP is Favorite Girl. This is certainly an upbeat happy song. This song is more enjoyable if you happen to be in love with someone, as opposed to being a nasty old curmudgeon such as myself. But nonetheless I still enjoy the song. It’s hard to say how much I like this song, or really any of the songs on the EP, because when I first started listening to The Icarus Account I originally only had about five or six of their songs on my ipod, and the other songs I just thought were okay, but as the months progressed I started to find the good in other of their songs and now I have 18 of their songs on my ipod, not counting the four from this EP. So in a month from now I could like any of these four songs considerably more than I do right now, that’s not to say that I don’t like them now. I liked Dear Love, More To Me, Closer To You and Anchors Away when I first heard them, but it took awhile before I loved them as much as I do now.

By the way, I figure now is the apt time to mention this, you can listen to almost all of their songs on their youtube page, which hopefully I linked there, and you can listen to the songs on the EP their too or at their purevolume page and probably their myspace page too or somewhere or other, or you could be old fashion and buy the EP or any of their other songs on Amazon or itunes. The EP is only four dollars. That’s less than it costs to get a handy from the crazy Korean man behind the Vietnamese restaurant next to my house. Why a Korean man is behind a Vietnamese restaurant I’ll never know. Why he’s giving hands jobs for so cheap, sadly I do know. Oh yeah, at purevolume.com/theicarusaccount you can download Favorite Girl for free. I know if he had a computer that Korean man would.

I’m going to make the rest of this short and to the point because I’m running out of time. Time for what, I’m not quite certain. Come Back Home is okay, the last part of the song is my favorite. Sunshine and Rain is good, and it’s very possible that a month from now it will be my favorite song on the EP, and Yellow Shirt is at the moment my favorite song on the EP.

Now I know this was a half hearted review, and you want your time and money back. Well I can’t give you your time back, and even though I technically didn’t take your money, I’m going to give you something better than money, Amazon mp3 money. My friend who is a geek…I mean nice guy finds a lot of deals online and recently he found a promotional code for Amazon.com for three dollars that you can put towards buying mp3s. All you have to do is click on the link provided, enter the code that will be on the page and you’ll have three dollars towards mp3s added to your account. You can thank my friend by visiting his wordpress site techymarketer.wordpress.com and telling him thank you – for the love of God be funny about it and don’s specify why you’re thanking him – or you can just spam the hell out of his site, either way I’m happy.

Free $3 from Amazon code link…[expires November 29th, 2010, so hurry]

Hmm, so now you have three dollars to spend at Amazon on mp3s, but unfortunately The Icarus Account’s EP Sunshine and Rain costs four dollars, so whatever shall you do? I know, since you can download Favorite Girl for free on their purevolume page you can use the free three dollars I just gave you to buy the other three tracks on the EP.  Technically you can put the money towards any mp3s on Amazon, but it’d be nice if you at least bought one of The Icarus Account’s songs since I mentioned them here, just for the love of God don’t buy any Lady Gaga songs or I will be forced to punish myself shamefully for accidentally doing her evil bidding.

This song isn’t on the new EP, I just love it so damn much in such a terribly sad way