TU Cent Thoughts, 11-4-05

[greybeta]

Sunday's verse: "As iron sharpeneth iron, so must a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friends."-Proverbs 27:17
This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. For my new readers, I will tell you that either I will sharpen you and you will sharpen me. I truly believe that I know very little, but I must share what little I know with others. If we all pull together all knowledge, then we can do some good in the world. So let's continue to sharpen each other, shall we?

Quote of the Day: "Hey, they don't teach you how to hold babies in medical school." -GrrshhNguyen

Link of the Day: Outpost Nine. This has already been linked a lot in the blogging world, but this is an insanely funny blog about an English high school teacher in Japan through an exchange program. The thing is the English teacher is an African American gamer, so if you understand the gaming culture you will laugh your socks off. Those crazy Japanese!
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Speaking of the Japanese, they totally dominate Magic nowadays. Thank you Magic Online for giving dedicated Japanese players the tool they needed to catch up and surpass lazy Americans. Not to mention their culture. If you take a look at the interviews, their top players actually want to help out the next generation. Every generation looks to improve the talent of the next. Japanese Magic isn't afraid to try unorthodox ideas. American Magic is currently plagued by "G/W suxors, I'd never play it...unless the Japanese were playing it."

This is part of the reason why I want to be a judge...the complete snottiness of scrubs who think they know what they're talking about when they talk Magic. And I am part of the problem.
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Today is an almost meaningless day for me in fantasy football. I have the best team according to breakdown and power rankings, but I can't improve on a second place finish in my division due to losing the head to head with the division leader. However, I can take pride in personally eliminating someone from the postseason in this last regular season week for my league. Also, I am only thirteen points behind the overall pts leader in the league so if I do well today I can claim the overall pts total.
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In poker, I like the words "all in" too much. Never, ever take me to Vegas. Because I try to be super cool and bet a lot of money on double zero on the roulette table. I actually did that one at my high school graduation's casino night, to the sadness of all my old friends.
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Despite the fact that I play the piano, I have little knowledge of pop music. I guess I just never spent the effort to find music that I liked. So, um, I need you fine people to enlighten me. What exactly is the difference between pop music and indie pop music? Furthermore, which is better?

Comments

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

I don't know a hell of a lot about pop or indi pop (I'm more of a heavy metal girl, with a good sized dollup of broadway and classical thrown in) but from what I understand, it goes like this:

Pop is the really popular stuff like Britney Spears and it charictarized by bouncy beats, simple chord structure, a catchy tune with an oft-repeated chorus and not much in the way of verses or bridges and focus on the singer.

Indie pop is also characterized by bouncy beats, simple chord structure, catchy tune, and focus on the singer, but does a little bit more "edgy" stuff in terms of sound so that it can claim to be the music that you listen to if you're a very special snowflake who doesn't listen to what the popular kids listen to ;)

Pretty much everyone here is gonna tell you, I'll expect, that either indie pop is better or that, like me, they're not particularly fond of either. I can take most of that stuff or leave it.

Personally, I prefer some of the more talented metal bands in the neo baroque tradition of Randy Rhoads because the sound tends to be deeper and more complex. Iron Maiden right now has a total of four different guitars, all doing more or less their own thing, plus the drummer, a singer who has been operatically trained, and usually some keyboardy things added for effect. It's almost like listening to a symphony. I'm not too pleased with their most recent album, which tends to repeat its sound an awful lot, but I really loved 'Brave New World'. If you get a chance, listen to 'Ghost of the Navigator', which is my themesong.

Another one that's really cool is Apocalyptica, which isn't so much a metal band as a group of four very talented celloists who sometimes cover metal songs. They got famous with an album of Metallica covers that rocks quite a lot more than Metallica rocks playing their own music, but they've since branched into original compositions, which are even better.

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty ignorant about Heavy Metal, too. Classical music just happens to be more my cup of tea.