Surfin' Acton USA

I was randomly clicking through the blogs of everyone in Acton, Massachusetts (dismally few, but more than one would expect). It's kind of funny that the list was littered with half-dead blogs dutifully updated for a week, then gradually less and less until they withered away. Actually, I'm not sure that's funny because I'm talking about death--in an electronic, metaphorical way--but still talking death.

Anyways, I encountered a blog by a fellow female teenage Actonian, who said this:

So, recently my LJ and Xanga have been
populated by people who I don't neccisarily want to be visiting them. Because of
this, I decided I needed to create a private blog- a small one, a discreet one,
with no memories or attachments to other things. No school, no camp, no silly
feuds or desperate attempts to make myself seem credible. No vain, emotionless
ramblings about the series of my day-to-day events, no silly polls. Just me.
Pure, white, clean, and effortless me. Every single note I sing or think or
scream will be for you to decipher. Be my friends, be my confidantes, be silent
if you wish. But please just try and understand these nonsensical mumblings that
tumble from these lips. I have the worst intentions and the best of ideas. Love
me.

That pretty much sums up why I am here too--more elegantly than I could. I think that afterwards she rambled on about drugs and shit in school, which is so far removed from my end of the scholastic spectrum. Alas, my safe, boring sheltered world, where my biggest worry is a grade on a exam. AP Mic and Mac in two days. Boy am I not excited.

[Explicative Deleted]

With my naiveté, I was shocked by the proliferation of profanity among my classmates when I first entered high school. I was similarly surprised by the liberal application of "fucking" to describe just about any noun, verb, and adjective.

So I was a sheltered child, who believed that swears were only used by big, bad, ugly men. However, within these few years, "fuck" was evolved into a valuable part of my vocabulary along with many slightly milder swears. I use these words with discretion, of course, never shouting it down the halls or using it in front of my parents. In the vocabulary of my mind, on the other hand, uncensored by the politeness of society, "fuck" takes a much for dominant position.

On the bus back to school from the US history AP, a fellow student described his reaction to the essays with a string of loudly enunciated "fucks," complete with hand gestures reminiscent of a strangling. This utter lack of discretion for profanity led me to think about the profusion of foul language that has sprung up in writing.

As with anything in this Internet age, the influence of the internet is undeniable. It has provided a forum for debate with no codified rules or threshold of intelligence. As a result, profanity is often substituted for the ability to fully articulate, or even form, an argument. I don't mean to broadly generalize every corner of the Internet, as there are many pockets of intelligent discussion folded in the general mess, but the vast majority of so-called debate is nothing more than a few rounds of name-calling.

I'm not saying that people on the Internet are stupid; it's merely that the anonymity of the Internet shields us from shame should we say something that truly is stupid. It often takes less than 10 posts in a forum before the debate has degenerated into something like, "It's so fucking stupid." While I'm certain that "stupid" is not engaging in sexual intercourse with anyone or any word for that matter, profanity only distracts from the actual argument, provided there is one.

I am always irked when "fucking" is used to describe a word when another adjective would be a much better substitute. There's no the denying the crude power of such a explicit word, though that power has been declining with its increasingly frequent usage. In any event, using "fucking" to describe a word is like using a grenade to assassinate a president when a sniper could do the job much more cleanly and neatly. There's a reason it's called the F-bomb.

TtDBID # 1: Go to Cannes

Today, I'm starting a new series of Things to Do Before I Die. As for my personal view of death, I have never seen it as morbid, partly because I have easily accepted death as the natural end. But at the age of 16, I probably still have most of my life laying before me and I have no idea what to do with the rest of it. This is to point myself in a direction--any direction, right or wrong--for those years down the road. There is no order to this list other than the order they come into my head. Without further ado:

1. Cannes Countdown: 10 days! Le festival de Cannes 2006 commence le mai 17 et je peux pas attendre. The pathetic thing is that I will probably not be seeing any of the films screening at Cannes until this time next year, when they are released on DVD.

Given that statement, it's obvious that I am not going to Cannes this year, or any time soon. But my goal is to go at least once in my life. Experience that glamour, that glitz, that dizziness at least once. For serious cinephiles (I am still far from being one), going to Cannes is their holy pilgrimage. It's a Mecca for Mastroianni fans, a Jerusalem for Jarmush devotees. Oh Muse! Ground me before I get carried away with these silly spiritual metaphors.

Cannes treads the fine line between the crassness of commercialism and the pretentions of high art. Even as Paris Hilton prances her way down the French Rivera, the Croissant is (mostly) dominated by films that will never see the dark of a theater in the US. Cannes represents a precious opportunity to watch these films surrounded by the energy and enthusiasm of fellow film-lovers. What better bonding experience than sitting for 3 hours in a darkened theater watching a tedious diatribe on the evils of modern humans who lounge around doing nothing, have sex out of boredom, and then kill each other out of boredom? Enjoy the collective bonding that ensues as we all express our wishes to kill the director out of boredom.

That was I little tongue in cheek there, but I am seriously psyched for Cannes. There are so many films I cannot wait to watch (ie obsessively find reviews of) starting May 17. And no more APs to ruin my day either!

Love It or Hate It, It Ain't Going Away

Like any average American, I have a unhealthy obsession with celebrity. Gawker, Defamer, Fametracker, Snarkfest, and Crown Princess Marie Chantal are my regular Internet haunts for the latest drippingly juicy bit of celeb gossip. The people who run or post on these sites are on the snarky side, but rarely venemously hateful.

In a world where celeb-bashing is a national sport second to only celeb-worshipping, I must confess that I have another unhealthy obsession in my irrational dislike of Natalie Portman. By all accounts, Portman seems like a nice enough girl, has a Harvard education, is praised to hell and highwater for her looks, and is a good actress. And I dislike her intensely. Of course, this isn't something I lose sleep over (having to even make that statement perhaps reveals the depth of my obsession), and I am consciously aware that my dislike for her stems from plain ol' jealously.

I like to believe that the majority of the American population is as rational as me. I don't mean to sound self-righteous, but I have recently realized that small minorities of the population are just stupid. While browsing a forum about Natalie Portman (I know, shut up), there was one poster who went to great lengths to express his adamant, vitriolic hatred for Gael Garcia Bernal. The poster ranted on and on in multiple 500+ word posters about the supposed hypocrisy, shallowness, and homosexuality that is Bernal.

Okay, so Bernal was my first real celebrity crush, and I have a special obligation to defend him against such nonsense. This is not that hard of a task as he is an almost universally beloved actor by those who know him and there are legions of critics and fans alike to aid my cause.

I was however, struck by the absolute abandon with which the poster attacked Bernal, someone he knew only as the supposed boyfriend of Portman. Never had I seen such bitterness and animosity leap from the screen as the sharpened daggers of his words cut across cyberspace. He attacked Bernal for his choice of socially-conscious and sexually-explicit roles in Y tu mama tambien, Bad Education, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Amores Perros. Anyone who follows art-house films will immediately recognize those titles as some of the most claimed foreign language films of the last few years, yet the poster derided them as pandering to a liberally-biased critical establishment.

The issue here is not whether the poster's argument held any water, but the shocking acrimony with which he delivered it. Despite my patent dislike for Portman, I have never crossed, or even gone anywhere close to this line of total hatred. I cannot even bring myself to say I hate Portman because I do not know her personally in any way, shape or form. In fact, I cannot say I hate anyone even in real life or at least I have not sustained hatred toward anyone for longer than 24 hours. I want to say something witty about hate here, but I cannot, because I have not truly experienced it in my life. I am at once intrigued and alarmed with the poster's utter hatred of someone so far removed from his real life.

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control

While surfing the 'net with the hated AOL explorer today, I discovered yet another reason to detest AOL: AIM Fight.

AOL is the company that brought the Internet, along with all its good and evils, into the mainstream with its irritatingly effervescent quips of "You've got mail" and "Hello [insert mangled pronunciation of Asian name]." It also popularized the now preferred mode of communication among teens: instant messaging. With its promise of "instant" gratification and a short hip abbreviation (IM, as in "I am cool because I IM"), IM quickly caught on with the technologically-inclined generation of youngsters.

Bear with me here as I sound like a sociology textbook, but I am trying to understand the mass appeal of IM. As someone who has stubbornly labeled herself as uncool, I have long resisted the lures of instant messaging. Alas, even I fell prey to its benefits as I strove to maintain contact with my friends from summer camp.

IM is fast, cheap and easy. Fast as it's instant, cheap as it's free, and easy as it doesn't ask anything of you. Conversations on IM demand no commitment from you more than a few typo-riddled phrases littered with "lol" and "lmao." In fact, how can it? These few words in their uniform font look the same on the screen no matter what you actually mean or intend; no wonder IM communication is just as often miscommunication. Take a word like "so," which can be sarcastic, complimentary, angry, humorous, confused, questioning, manipulative, amused, or tired all depending on how you say it. Intonation, facial expressions, volume, hand gestures; these communication cues are totally lost when transcribed through the keyboard.

What I'm trying to get at here is that IM has created vast but impersonal social networks. Of course, IM is not the only factor, xanga, myspace, livejournal, facebook and other such websites have all contributed to better connected, but oddly enough, worse tied webs of contact.

It would have pleased the Social Darwinists that our culture has managed to marry the principles of competition with the Internet and its social networks as well. As oversensitive teenagers would have it, it is no longer about not who you know, but how many you know. This new round of competition is all about how many people you are friends with, and thus your perceived popularity.

What drew my indignation toward AIM Fight is how easy it makes comparing people's "popularity." By facilitating such comparisons and calling them "fights" with all due fanfare, AOL has only exacerbated the competitive woes of our culture. The program allows you to compare your "popularity" (its exact word) with others through the number of active buddies to the third degree. You are now only a click of the mouse away from self-gratification or a steep drop in self-esteem.

While I have often simultaneously chided and praised the anonymity of the internet, I find this is be a disgusting violation of privacy. It is too intimate just as it is discreet and uncontrollable. Equally disgustingly, I found myself fascinated with this program and proceeded to "fight" with a number of buddies.

One feature of AOL mail that has always caused me to fear using it is how it alerts you when a recipient has read your email. As with AIM Fight, I have realized that willful ignorance is perhaps the key. While this may run countercurrent to my nature, sometimes it is simply better not to know.