02.22.07
Posted in Personal at 12:38 pm by Joe Blubaugh
Sometimes, it would be much easier to write here if I were an anonymous internet personality, but recent events have caused me to worry again about ‘Public Joe’ vs. ‘Private Joe’ and whether or not there exists a ‘Real Joe.’ It is a fact that I act differently in different situations and with different people. This is not unusual, as I’m trying to live up the expectations of a situation to make a social experience more pleasant. This is what people do. These days, I’m not doing it to get people to like me, but to facilitate conversation.
It’s a popular notion that ‘you are what you do when you think no one’s watching.’ I’m unconvinced as to the truth of that. I’m unconvinced that we are anything other than what we are currently. I think it’s a fiction that we have an Inner Me that we either express or do not express. That’s an easy sell-out: “I’m not being the Real Me, who is a good, good person.” It lets us feel good about ourselves without actually being good. So if I am, at the moment, acting like an asshole, I am, at the moment, an asshole. Really, what way have we to judge what kind of person we are than by the actions we commit?
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02.13.07
Posted in Personal at 11:05 am by Joe Blubaugh
Last week here at Purdue it snowed four inches in approximately 8 hours. Today, Purdue cancelled classes from noon today until noon tomorrow because of a predicted total accumulation of 8 inches. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind this, except that it involves canceling a Jazz Band rehearsal, which I enjoy, and an electronics lab, which I will have to make up in my free time. I think that this officially makes me an old person - I am not very excited about this snow day.
Speaking of being old before my time, I find that I’m deleting a lot of stuff from my music library that I enjoyed when I was younger. System of a Down, Manic Street Preachers, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have all made unceremonious exits from my hard drive recently. I think deleting Green Day from my library officially brands me as an adult music consumer. I won’t go soft, though. Coldplay can still stay the hell away from me.
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02.11.07
Posted in Personal at 12:34 pm by Joe Blubaugh
Damn, whatever happened to horror flicks? Late last night I went and saw Hannibal Rising at the near-campus theater. It was the most tedious movie I’ve seen recently. I fell asleep at a movie about A GUY WHO EATS PEOPLE! I suppose it’s an encouraging sign that the smart, engaging directors are not interested in making horror movies, but as a fan of a lot of older horror flicks, I’m disappointed in the direction that the genre has taken.
From all the way back to Nosferatu and forward through Psycho and Night of the Living Dead, horror movies were about scaring people, rather than trying to make them vomit. There was more suspense, less gore, and you left the theater feeling genuinely creeped out.
I’ve heard the modern crop of horror films described as ‘horror porn,’ and Hannibal Rising fits that bill perfectly. There’s a ton of gore, but I don’t care who lives and who dies here. You could’ve just tossed everyone off in a giant exploding airplane and it would’ve meant the same to me. The only thing to be involved in here is just how people die, and it’s a tedious, boring exercise.
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02.08.07
Posted in Personal at 11:26 am by Joe Blubaugh
Modern life is Sisyphean, except we all have several stones to roll up the hill, all at once, without letting them fall to the bottom. I really hate the juggling metaphor that everyone uses, because juggling is fun, and no matter how well I seem to manage my time, I still don’t like managing it. For some reason, I don’t really have a problem with it when my time is scheduled by other people. I’m not bothered that I have to be at class at a certain time, but I am bothered that I have to create some kind of study schedule in order to get the work for the class done. It doesn’t make me feel accomplished and organized when I sit down and work for a specific amount of time; it makes me feel caged in. I’ve got to shift my perception - there’s nothing wrong with getting things done, I just need to start believing again that it’s worth it.
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