Iva’s personal site - Squirrelism.net

I almost deleted this website yesterday. I had a bad, bad, bad PMS (sorry for too much info) and I don’t remember having been this self-destructive in years. The past two weeks have been mentally overwhelming for me, with good and bad things bombing me each from its own side. Blah. I could use some cheering up now.

The first week, which is, well, the week before this one was all about one BIG shock. Let’s say that some people are becoming more and more dominant as I’m writing this and that they have changed their tactics from You all suck to Aww, I love you guys so much! Wanna be my friends? Whoever the person in question is, they’re really taking this shiznit too far and I don’t get how they’re winning people? Maybe because people whom they’re winning, with honourable exceptions, are the social butterflies. Either way, I’ve had enough of know your whatever this year.

Unlike that week, the week that’s ending with today was…well, stressful. I learned one thing from it: never ask your parents for job advise. I am close to getting a very nice job and I almost lost it because mom and dad were telling me how much to ask from the job providers…and my unofficial older sister was on their side. In the end, it turned out that the pay IS small, but that it WILL increase as I’m advancing so…yeah, I said yes. Once the contract is signed, I’ll tell you where I’m going to work, but I guess it’s not that hard to guess. And no, it’s not Pepsi :p

Does anyone of my age and slightly younger/older remember Fabuland? You know, one of those lines of products Lego had before they became waaay too complicated to follow. For an anthro fan like myself, Fabuland was Promiseland. All the characters were cute animals. My favourite was and always will be Max Mouse. In my mind, Lucy Lamb was always his girlfriend, as they were together in most of the playsets they were a part of. I have a small roudabount with a parkbench, with Max and Lucy, I have a house with Bonnie Bunny and Edward Elephant, as well as the bus station with Nessie Hippo and Mike Monkey. But I don’t have the amusement park on this picture. That one was my obsession. When I went to Italy with mom and dad in 1987, I wanted that one so much, but I got some Lego Basic set instead. Then mom went to Germany twice in 1988, but she’d always bring me something else. Then it turned out that my wonderful friend Mira never got that one either. And we made a deal: one day we’re soooo going to get that amusement park, no matter how much it costs. Yes, we’re mad, but proud of it as well.

What else…John shaved his head again:

I’m going to miss those long romantic brown curls a bit, but, at the other side, he looks younger with shorter hair; and if he donated hair to Locks Of Love again, that’s one more reason to love him. Come to think, when was the last time we were able to see his whole face. Errr…early 2005?

.::uni stuff::.
I am pretty much comfortable with the fact that I didn’t pass the second year of my four year studies for…god, you don’t want to know which time. However, I’m not comfortable with the fact that, when I get to the last year someday, I might have someone from 2001 generation I’m a part of teaching me. Sofija is a better student than Mila and me, she is at the beginning of the last year now and she was rather surprised to see one of our class mates from the first year as professor’s assistant. And then, well, I have to wonder. When I was 18, looking at what to choose for my degree, I picked something I really liked. I could have picked English language and I would’ve probably obtained my diploma by now…but I always thought of English language as some sort of an universal, rather easy thing which wouldn’t be that interesting to get deeper into. I could have picked my native language, but what would be the use? I’d have to spend the rest of my life at a highschool or elementary school teaching a bunch of kids with hormones set on overdrive. This way, I hope to find something more creative to do for living.

.::g33k stuff::.
I think the most of the site problems are solved now, apart from the ongoing issues with every single Gravatar plugin I try to use. They all either display no gravatars at all, or they display the default one for every single person. Why do the Gravatars hate me? I seriously don’t get this anymore.

The commenter plugger and the threaded comments plugin hate each other, since the first one is plugging *me* after I reply to someone else’s comment. I can live with the ridiculous idea of plugging myself on my own website, but it’s still…stupid.

I am currently making myself some link buttons. I feel bad because I owe one to Sam and I just SUCK at making buttons. So, well, hope these on the domain page are at least satisfying.

And I am desperately looking for a plugin which would enable me to blog in Serbian as well, without too much fuss or without installing another WP.

.::stuff stuff::.
Either way, here’s my little reward for the day. My wonderful friend Marian from New York sent me a letter, a little something for which I can’t still figure out what it is, the both Dani California singles and one of the Tell Me Baby Singles…2 of those 3 were bought via gift certificate from my Amazon associate earnings; the third one was a gift. And, the best part of the gift is the November 2006 issue of Guitar Player Magazine, with John Frusciante on the cover. The article is amazing, he’s talking about recording of Stadium Arcadium…in fact, he dissected every single song to atoms, he revealed the secrets of what he was using in terms of equipment. My mother was, as usual, annoyed with the cover, she compared John to Genaro Gattuso, she accused him of wanting to gain more female fans by wearing an unbuttoned shirt and she was pretending not to hear me when I said that John today is what Hendrix and Page were back in the days. Blah…either way, if you want to see the whole article, head over to Invisible Movement; I should have it up there soon.

So…all hail Marian and fingers crossed to her because that wonderful woman is going to two Red Hot Chili Peppers’ shows this week and she deserves to have the best time ever. I am as excited as if I would be if I was going to those shows.

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.

Ironically, the most of the people come to my site searching for a video clip or audio recording of John Frusciante performing The Shiriless’ Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow at one of the recent Red Hot Chili Peppers’ shows. I don’t know how that pops up as a keyword for squirrelism.net, as I don’t know the hidden wonders of search engines, but perhaps it’s because both this site and Invisible Movement are owned by me? I have no bloody idea. I also don’t understand the Google page rank thing, which gives both sites the same numberthingy.Guess I still have catching up to do.

Either way, if the doll wants the rabbit, she gets the rabbit; as Bugs Bunny would say in that cartoon with Humphrey Boggart. Here’s a video of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow , from the Oakland, California, USA show on 25th August this year, taken by my amazing friend Amanda Vierra:

For more things like this, seriously go to Invisible Movement, as this is just a boring personal site owned by its owner.

Also, if you’re a RHCP fan, do check out this. Dave Rat has an amazing sense of humour (and one would perpahs think techies are boring:p) and he takes some good pics. Nice to see that there are mere mortals near the band because the way their PR and fanclub are going these days (e.g. you pay 40 dollars and you get a fanclub package which fits into a bigger letter envelope and its value is one dollar!), one would expect some scary robots with scissors instead of fingers.

Plugs: Dandyna, Claudia, Dhany, Rika, Mira and Vera.

In other words, I just saw the nominations for the MTV Video Music Awards. I think I was horrified. Why would I be horrified when my favourite female singer (Shakira with Hips Don’t Lie) and my favourite band (Red Hot Chili Peppers with Dani California) got seven nominations each? Why? Because, well, I think it’s not because of the videos themselves, those videos are nothing special.

Shakira’s video at least has good direction and montage and she’s dancing well, but the video itself is, like…pointless? No message, no story, nothing! Some of her other videos, like Objection and even Don’t Bother had some sort of a feminist message to go with them; this one is just an oriental dancing video.

As for RHCP…the video scared me the first time I saw it, honestly. It was pretty dumb to put a video with Nirvana parody in it on air a couple of days before the 12th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s suicide. I am not a fan of Nirvana at all, but it was just…odd. Let’s say that the video looks a bit low-budget, atmosphere is crappy, backgrounds are kinda stupid; but it’s probably a masterpiece if one’s a make-up artist? I mean, guess it was hard to turn a guy who has a messy bush of cute curls reaching his shoulders on his head into a Beatle with straight short hair and fringe?

How about the other nominees? Christina Aguilera got nominated for a video which went on air, like, a couple of days ago and, of course, it sucks and her image is, once again, so passé. The Pussycat Dolls (guess they need the “cat” part to mask what they really are…?) got nominated for another showing of their underwear. James [Sacharine-Coated-Crybaby] Blunt got nominated as well. Can’t stand him after all the idiotic ugly things he said about my country, so I hope he doesn’t win anything. He’s got a long way to go to become a real singer-songwriter anyway.

Some decent videos are nominated too, such as the Gnarls Barkley and Angels And Airwaves ones….also the Kelly Clarkson’s Because Of You, which has a message, after all…and, LOL, of course, P!nk’s Stupid Girls…hope that one wins something, it’s mad! My other favourite band, Green Day, was nominated too, but I think Wake Me Up When September Ends is one of their worst videos…and a bit of propaganda (regardless of the side they’re on), since the song is not about the war in Iraq, but about the death of Billie Joe’s Armstrong father. As for Madonna’s Hung Up, that one deserves only the award for choreography.

Guess we can only be lucky that Paris Hilton got no nominations!

So, even after all, I’ll be cheering for the Red Hots and Shakira with all my heart! Why?
- Shakira Mebarak is one of the rare intelligent and educated women in the music business, she speaks a couple of languages, she doesn’t put herself on sickening diets to have the body she has, she doesn’t need scandals and one thousand love affairs to be popular, she actually writes and produces her own songs. Have you ever heard Inevitable? That’s one of the best rock songs ever written. Have you ever heard Pies Descalzos Sueńos Blancos? Perfect way to explain the bad sides of today’s society. How about Timor? I just hope that one is her next single! So, goooo Shakira!

- Talking about Red Hot Chili Peppers…John Frusciante is one of the greatest musicians on Earth. Nobody else can be so creative and emotional, an amazing guitarist, a very good songwriter (Listen to his solo albums! Do it NOW!) and a very good vocalist as well. And dressing him up as Eddie van Halen and getting him to kiss Anthony Kiedis on the cheek isn’t going to change that. Convincing him to do a creepy photo session, being almost naked and posing as err…Jesus Christ isn’t going to change that either. He’s the mastermind behind the greatest rock band on Earth, they would’ve been nowhere without his guitar playing, backing vocals, overdubs, mixing and the most of production. So, I will still vote for them. And, of course, don’t forget Chad Smith, he’s the coolest drummer on Earth.

Now I’m guessing it’s pretty obvious why masterpieces such as Blur’s Coffee And TV never won anything big and why average videos like TLC’s Waterfalls and Madonna’s Ray Of Light won heaps of awards. Because it’s not about videos at all, it’s about songs and how popular those songs were. Other way, pointless videos’d never win anything!