Can’t believe people fell for that *again* part I

On the night between 12th and 13th October, I was talking to my German friend Kerstin and somehow we came up with the subject of trends…girlbands and boybands. She told me that a friend of hers has to promote a girl band called Soccx and I said that I have not seen them yet, despite the fact that my prehistoric analog satellite system is mostly showing German TV channels. Either way, both Kerstin and I pulled an all-nighter; then, when my mom woke up, I logged off and went to watch TV, as dad went fishing and when he’s here, nobody can watch TV since he’s always in front of it.

Guess what was the first thing I saw? You guessed it right, Soccx, and their music video for From Dusk To Dawn. They were robbing a bank, they were examined by police, seducing police officers and bla bla blaaaaaa. The song was OK, I basically like happy pop songs, but everything else was something I’ve seen 1000 times: licking lips, making those dumb pseudo-sexy faces, pulling wonderbra straps from under small tops, exposed stomach, low-cut skinny jeansand miniskirts. Then I changed the channel to see if Spongebob was on yet and when I switched back to Viva Plus, there was Diddy talking to the band. I was confused because I had no idea what he’d be doing with a German pop band…

…and it really took me until the end of the video to realise that the Soccx video ended and that this was another band, Danity Kane and that they were, obviously, from USA. I swear that I could not spot the difference on the first watch/listen! They were indentical to Soccx in terms of haircuts, clothing, just more RnB and less pop. Then I Googled a little and found the whole story on Making The Band, the series which I don’t think German MTV and MTV Adria have stopped showing after the obvious fact that nobody really like O-Town, hehe.

Either way, girl bands became a bit too cheap nowadays. With Spice Girls, it was OK at the beginning, they did have some “headlights” showing in the Wannabe video, some of those skirts and dresses were really too short to sit down in and Geri Halliwell’s stunts and Victoria Beckham’s (actually, she was Adams back then) private life were such annoying things to fill the newspapers with…however, they were amusing. You can say everyone loved them. Then some idiot launched All Saints and eeeh…yuck. They covered a song they probably didn’t even understand, one of them got pregnant almost immediatelly and had to hide her huge stomach in the Bootie Call video clip and, well, you get the idea, they didn’t last long. Not to forget that there were the early Atomic Kitten, B*Witched, Solid HarmoniE, Funky Diamonds…and, to my knowledge, the most of those bands were formed after auditions.

When the whole thing got boring, the auditions became public, turned into big votings and reality shows. Anyone remembers popstars? No Angels won in Germany in 2000, the USA band was Eden’s Crush. No Angels were, well, pretty good and actually talented. And all five members actually could sing, two of them, Lucy and especially Nadja have stunning voices. I don’t know much about those popstar bands from other countries, though, so I’ll have to skip that bit…

Anyway, at that very point the audience didn’t want anything cute and girly anymore. The most of the bands would get, how I’m saying, sluttified after the first video or two…a complete image change, the “we’re not little girls anymore, we’re women” story, relationships with other celebrities, eccentric and ambitious “body modifications”. A couple of photo sessions in wonderbras or with hands covering breasts or erotic dancing sequences with men in videos were now obligatory. However, I think All Saints did that first with their performance at the MTV European Music Awards 1998, so all the girl bands of past and present must be hailing them as pioneers in that.

So, today, you have girl bands which are sluttified since the very beginning, no more pretending they’re cute harmless teenage girls. If they’re too young, you simply have to wonder who’s behind them? Marketing machinery, ambitious parents or pedophyle managers and choreographers? And, what’s worse, teen magazines are landfull of those girls, their sex and beauty tips and they’re praised on front pages for being “as sexy as one should be”. What does that result with? So many girls adopt the girlband babe image even for their everyday styling, they change boyfriends like socks (or soccx, perhaps?) and think they will always have priority over others just because they’re supposedly beautiful. Not good. Really, really not good. Also, the age limit for this or that is going down constantly. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a video with a 10-year-old singing while a small bikini top with wire inside is holding her barely existing breasts up and the camera is filming her bellydancing moves. I always remember what Anastacia Newkirk said a couple of years ago, that she was nowhere near her usual clothing style and image when she was a teenager. I repeat: nowhere near that. One thing is to listen to that music, it’s enjoyable (at least until it turns to p0rn); but you don’t have to copy those girls, for god’s sake, their image is artificial, anyway.

There will be a sequel to this entry sometime soon, as I have some things to say about boybands as well, as they’re even more stuck in a cliché. Ooooh yes I do.

Friday, The 13th

I am not supersticious. Friday the 13th, so freakin’ what? However, in elementary school, there was this girl, Nena, who was scared to death not only of Friday the 13th, but also every 13th of the month. Maybe it was because she was one of the worst students in the class, so she needed an excuse for failing? Either way, my friend Sofija has an exam today. It was supposed to be yesterday, but they postponed it. I know that we’re at the university and that everything is supposed to be serious and mature…but knowing our professors, they did it on purpose, to try to freak out as many people as possible. Not a nice joke, methinks.

I would like to thank everyone who commented on my previous entry. You were so nice, so supportive and it was wonderful to read such comments even from people who don’t know me, such as Despair commenters and those who stumbled upon my site. And, thinking about all that, I also figured out that the certain guy might’ve been frighten by the fact that I know much more than he knows. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time it happened. Here in Serbia web design, e-commerce and similar things sort of exploded in 2005 when the main telecommunications company let go of its monopoly and allowed minor ISPs to offer ADSL, wireless and cable connections to people. Can’t imagine what kind of a war this will be once those connections are actually affordable by each single regular mortal the way dial-up is. Designers will be jumping over each other to get a work opportunity…ohwell, guess I need to learn how to resist….in “the way the Eastpak bag stays on a skeleton” way.

Either way, thought I’d reveal a little obsession here. Virtual Villagers! That game is sooo addictive. Some people say that it reminds them of The Sims, but since I am not a gamer and I never played that one anyway, no matter how famous it is, I can’t really make a comparison there, sorry. All I know is that this game is, well, tricky and that cheating or experimenting isn’t a good idea…why?

…because it ends like this:

And, it should definitely be like this:

So, I’d advice everyone to try your luck with Virtual Villagers. 4 of my tribes starved to death, but the 5th tribe survived, I solved all the 16 puzzles and bought all the tech…and now I basically have to wait for someone to die of old age so there could be more babies, as the population is limited to 90 villagers.

P.S. Very special plugs for Claudia because she found me the commenter plugger script and for Nozomi, because I spy the certain most wonderful person on the planet on her layout. Oh yes, and also Rika, because this is, if I’m not wrong, her…fifth domen since we met? So…..Rika, Rika, Rika, Rika, Rika!!!:p

Earth, please swallow me.

I got rejected for a job…in the worst possible manner…without a reply to my email, without explaining WHY I am not the right person for the job. The person who was supposed to hire me didn’t even look at what I can do as a web designer, he acted as if he has no idea what kind of applications I can maintain and what experience I have…and he rejected me ON A PUBLIC MESSAGE BOARD! He didn’t bother to send me a reply to my email, where I analysed the state of the current website to details, where I said what could be done and he acted as if a 3-year-old wanted to help out…not a serious grown up person.

I want do die of sadness now :( Seriously. Some a$$hole who already has enough money *(and probably designs shitty, 1996-styled websites) will get that job instead of me and do it worse than I would’ve done it…without love, without interest in the subject of the website and not half as good.

My last chance would be that choir and that wonderful language/IT school accepting me to work for them. Otherwise, I think I might as well sign up to be a cleaning lady. A designer loves to do new things, loves to explore and even though my primary job at the moment is reorganising pages of books and making them ready to be converted into programs, I prefer to design.

Of…

…Despair.nu
Despair.nu is a nice thing. The site itself is nicely designed, powered by a script without bugs and the general idea of commenting on three random people’s blogs and having three people comment on your blog. Well, that’s how it works in theory. In reality, I commented on three people’s blogs (and one of them was an absolute angel by returning the comment, a proof that not all the people in the blogosphere are robotic…thank you, Soup!) and got just one comment…(once again, from a very cute person, so thank you, Marsha, as well!). I already got three new sites to comment on. And, well…one of them is on a hiatus, of them has an UNBELIEVABLY HUGE .png as a backgroun and I’ll have to check it from Lynne’s office, as it killed my poor 38.6 Kbps dial-up. But I commented on the third one and, once again, I liked the entry I commented on.

…the problem with I-M.net
I finally found out what was the problem with I-M.net and why the number of visitors per day suddenly dropped: Google, Yahoo and the rest of the gang need some time to get used to my new permalinks. The number is already increasing and I guess it will be back to its old glory by November or so. Yay! I love my site.

…October
Happy October:) I am looking forward to this month, because I’m rather desperate about deciding how I’ll continue at the university. I want to switch to the new system, the one the most of European universities are using and I think I do have an option for that. The “modules” the system is using sound like a nice way of keeping students’ attention…the system my STUPID university is still using is, well, crappy. My friend Mila and I are currently brainstorming about what we should do and what rules would affect us if we do switch.

Of Plugins
Perhance, does anyone have the commenter plugger and LJ-crossposter plugins? I get errors when I try to look them up from WP-Plugins and I think they could come quite handy here. But I think I will replace Gravatars2 with Alexander Bishop’s Gravatar (and userpics)…I hope it works for me, because this one doesn’t…and, well, I always trust people who write their everyday stuff in cyrillic, we’re smarter;) Мозгови!!!! Легенде!!!! ЛОЛ!