In my opinion, the worst possible question you can ask someone is, “what sort of music do you like”? That isn’t just opening up Pandora’s Box – it’s opening her closet too. A walk-in closet. Which should give you a fairly good idea of just how open ended I think such a question is. Trying to respond expects you to fit both yourself, and your musical tastes, into a well-defined category – something which should never be expected of either.

Take, if you will, but a simple statement: “I like rock.” Okay; great. But, what sort? Are you into punk, psychadelic, post-modern, alternative, experimental, lo-fi? The list goes on. Simply put, saying you like “rock” is not only restricting, but vague. It makes it seem as if you consider anything with a guitar as rock; and as we all know, this isn’t necessarilly the case.

In other music news, Broken Social Scene will be playing at The Sound Academy next Thursday. While I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Beck there a couple weeks ago, the venue is not without its faults; in particular, sub-par acoustics, and the most obscure location for any venue I’ve seen in a while. Regardless, I’m looking forward to the show. After seeing the band play almost a year ago (lacking the womenz, sadly), I’m expecting another solid performance. Here’s hoping, with the operating lineup beginning to dwindle (goodbye Feist, and probably Haines), it won’t be one of their last.

I may be getting a media pass for the show too, after some creative Arts&Crafts related sleuthing. Stay tuned.

So, an intriguing bit of worldplay for you today; what exactly is the difference between a pirate and hijacker nowadays, anyways?

Firstly, pirates. I’m pretty sure we’re all well aware of the oft-quoted Jack Sparrow stereotype that Disney’s rammed down our collective throats. Never mind the fact that Mr. Depp is suave, sexy, and oh-so-dreamy – the portrayal is simply wrong. It’s as if Disney expects us to believe that the high-seas were roamed by a couple hundred Keith Richards look-alikes, and not a group of particularly fierce sadists.

Secondly, hijackers. This word is largely thought to be Rudy Guiliani’s second, shortly after birth.

And the first? I’ll give you a hint; there’s both a 9, and an 11. But I digress.

My point, is that we seem to be attatched to fairly traditional, and largely stereotypical connotations of what both pirates and hijackers actually do nowadays. But ultimately, the two have actually become representative of the same thing. This is particularly noticeable when you compare the content of news outlets here in North America, to those overseas. Both the likes of Fox news (whom I loathe), and CNN (also a subject of loathing) gravitate towards the use of hijack. The BBC, and other wordly news networks tend to employ pirate. One plays on fear, the other, sensationalism.

When it comes down to it, do pirates really bear any similarity to the pirates of old, nowadays? I’d like to think not; conventional pirateering was often embodied by wanton theft and pillaging, and staunch disregard for morals and ethics – particularly when coupled with the uncanny desire to resort to violence and death. Or so our overlord Wikipedia tells me. Modern day pirates, meanwhile, tend to lack this particular defining quality; in fact, the International Maritime Bureau (there’s a desk, too, I hear) notes that the number of hostages taken by pirates is vastly higher than the number of crewmembers ultimately killed in attacks. This is probably because modern day pirates don’t actually steal; they extort. And that, my friends, is a whole different categorization all together.

This leads me to believe that modern day pirates have become just a little bit soft. Or, more likely, they are no longer true pirates in the conventional sense, but simply common thieves and criminals, that happen to posess seafaring tendencies. Of course, modern day news organizations have better things to do than explore the development of words and meanings; “Both travel the sea to commit crime you say? They must be pirates!”

And hijackers? Technically, such a designation should be considered correct as well, seeing as this is essentially what’s being done. Of course, there’s a reason that North American media outlets simply love to gravitate to this sort of wording, and that’s because it plays upon fears of terrorism. Afterall, if the hijackers are attacking our boats, WHAT MODE OF TRANSPORT WILL BE NEXT?! This is a question I look to Fox News to answer. Tonight. At 11.

All in all, we’ve simply accepted the re-tooled usage of these words, in whatever way news-organizations feel fit. But in reality, it seems that both words essentially mean the same thing; a group of men, probably not very different from those found in Oceans 11, raiding an obscure freighter in the Pacific to satisfy some monetary shortcoming, through both hostage taking and extortion.

Of course, that would make a horrible cutline. Pirates and hijackers it is.

“Your lack of blog updates disturbs me.”
Google, being the sentient, all-knowing entity it is, told me this the other day, while searching the intertubes. And so it was.

A matter of great grammatical importance has come to my attention. Facebook – the similarly all-powerful, yet Google-subservient social network, of which we are all a slave to – has a handy little feature called status updates. In theory, status updates are a noble concept; Facebook is a platform on which you have a great deal of friends and accquaintances. Naturally, some of those friends might find it prudent to know what’s going on in your life, courtesy of a small phrase or two. Of course, in practice, things tend to turn out terribly, terribly wrong.

You see, for the longest time, Facebook statuses followed the following format….

Matthew is having a psychadelic oddesy involving muffin tops and a walrus.

There’s the prefix (in this case, Matthew is), and the suffix, which is essentially any status you deem appropriate at the time. Normally, this wouldn’t pose a problem to most people. Of course, I use the term “most people” rather liberally; apparently the term doesn’t cover myspace-immigrants and the grammatically challenged. Thus, it was only a matter of time until Facebook statuses played host to this sort of behaviour….

Matthew is I want to get with you girl, you be lookin’ so fly.

Disclaimer: I have no problem with people putting song lyrics as their statuses. Or statii, if you want to be cool, and plural. What I do have a problem with, is those who choose to do so, in obvious ignorance of the laws of grammar. People like this truly confuse me – does reading that phrase back to yourself even begin to make sense? Most likely, the answer is no. Unless you’ve got Pirate Facebook turned on; then it would be nay.

Now, I might be able to excuse this if Facebook still actually required you to say Matthew is…. But the thing is, they don’t; the mandatory is was dropped months ago. Making you, the user’s job, infinitely easier.

Matthew wants to get with you girl, you be lookin’ so fly.

So WHY then, do people insist on keeping the is? Particularly when their supposed statii make no sense whatsoever? Are they simply inept when it comes to appropriate conjucation? Are they ignorant of subject/predicate agreement rules? HAVE THEY NEVER SEEN SCHOOL HOUSE ROCK?!

Gentle(wo)men of the internets – these are questions I need answered. My sanity, and the fate of the known Facebook world, depend upon it.

People gave Radiohead a lot of flack in the late nineties, particularly with the release of Amnesiac and Kid A. The massive critical acclaim which Radiohead recieved after the release of 1997′s OK Computer seemed to make the task of issuing a followup all the more difficult. Really, it’s not hard to see why; OK Computer is, without a doubt, Radiohead’s greatest album, a perfect harmony of the wailing guitar and technological sound Thom Yorke and Co. strove to combine in their music. So, how to continue?

From what I gather, fans were rather confused with Kid A, and eventually, Amnesiac’s release. Both records, recorded together in the span of a couple months, had a particularly difficult incubation process; simply put, Yorke didn’t know how to move forward.

What resulted is best described as an amalgamation of all the electronically-driven parts of OK Computer – on steroids, might I add. The album was unconventional in a number of ways, with some tracks consisting mainly of orchestrated noise and samples, while others garbled Yorke’s vocals to the point of incomprehensibility. While all this might have been good under the influence of a great deal of drugs, it seemed to alienate a great deal of fans.

The thing is, fans approached both albums expecting the conventional – more OK Computer, more of The Bends. What they got, instead, was an evolution of the band, one that was driven by many of the bandmember’s widening interests. Thom Yorke, beginning with OK Computer, had an increasing facsination with electronic music and sample, going insofar as to mention computer as one of the intstruments in his latter albums’ liner notes. Johnny Greenwood, meanwhile, had begun composing and orchestrating larger, string-based arrangments, first for motion picture soundtracks, and eventually, the band itself.

In my opinon, Amnesiac and Kid A have grown on me over the years, to the point where I hold both in incredibly high regard – just below OK Computer. There’s a noticeable lack of guitar on both albums, relegated to a significantly small portion of tracks. But that absence is easily made up for, what with Yorke’s increasing use of Piano and keyboard – not to mention the oft-haunting, but beautiful soundscapes both Yorke and Greenwood create with their layered ambient tracks.

For me, at least, the evolution Radiohead demonstrates here is what defines both albums. Afterall, if they played the same songs year after year, it wouldn’t just be boring; they would cease to be Radiohead.

And instead, we’d have to call them The Rolling Stones.

Last night was interesting, to say the least; while I had initially planned to watch the Office, and cause general havoc around Pittman residence, I instead made $200. And all I did was a little bit of filming.

Ryerson’s School of Journalism played host last night to a group known as The Muslim Project, which was essentially a panel discussion on the portrayal of religion and faith in the media – albeit, with an Islamic slant. While I was only responsible for filming the evening, the entire evening was incredibly interesting, and I even got a few contacts from the journalists in attendance as well.More on that in later, more detailed post.

Yet, last night made me realize, once again, just how much I’d rather not make a career out of broadcast journalism. To be fair, there wasn’t much journalism at play on my part; I set up some tripods, panned around quite a bit, and everything turned out okay. I didn’t even have to talk, or interview anyone. But it was the entire process of filming that had me groaning more than a few times throughout the evening.

Don’t get me wrong – I love filming. Throughout most of my high school career, I took communications tech, and actually made quite a few films I’m proud of to this day. Yet, as a self-proclaimed perfectionist, everything just seemed to be more trouble than it was worth in the end. That particular video – the one linked to above – probably took more than 10 hours of production, and about 2 hours of actually recorded video. All to be whittled down to a 4 minute product.

Part of this I attribute to the fact that, never have I worked with someone on any of my videos. I know things would be different if I were in film school, or even broadcast, but I just couldn’t find anyone to really identify with my ideas and goals while in secondary. Everything was written, conceived, filmed and ultimately edited by me. It wasn’t abnormal for me to spend a good 48 hours awake – straight – simply because I had to edit, render, and edit some more.

Now, I understand broadcast journalism is a totally different beast. You have to factor in the ability to broadcast live, to speak infront of a camera, to report in a specific, journalistic manner. Things are far less artistic, and far more straight forward, and informational But ultimately, I know that, somehwere along the way, it’ll be like high school all over again – whether it be a myriad of tech issues, a lack of footage, or something just not getting done.

For now, I’m satisfied with print journalism; adding film into the mix just seems like more unecessary torture to me.