Thursday, February 25, 2010

That last one doesn't count

Yeah, I got a "formspring" account thing because it seems interesting. Basically people ask you stuff and you answer them and you have no idea who's asking. Like anyone can ask. It's weird. They've just asked me weird shit so far...

Two-hour delay tomorrow AND Alex's birthday! Happy B-day, bitch!

Talked to my dad about college today...and by "talked to my dad about," I mean "got preached to about," of course. So I wanna go to Potomac State because I'm too much of a puss to run off into the world and go to college at this point and my dad hates that college...so! He tried to tell me how much he hated it...but I didn't really care. And I want a car because I need one for jazz band and track and other things...and I'm not sure I'm getting one right now!

I've been stressing about college and stuff since then, though. My mom isn't stressing it on me too much. My sister is pregnant. My brother may be coming back to public schools. I'm graduating. Life is just full of changes!

love,
Kyle

formspring.me

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/kylewagoner

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

How about THIS one?

So tomorrow is a huge test day for seniors. FUCK! We are testing first, second, and fourth block. That is a total of...4 and a half hours. TESTING! Imagine missing tomorrow and having to find time to make that up! But at least we don't have Miss Dean, eh?

I've really been thinking about things...well, sorta. But anyway, I really don't know what I'm going to do with my life. I really wanna get I Forget up on its feet and out into the world at least a little bit. First step seriously is to get these songs learned (and written) so we can run in and record them and make an album. Marc Phillips has been hashing out (I'm around Mr. Leonard too much...erg) our album cover. The album has been renamed for the third time and is now to be Flannelcore. I'm excited. You don't understand the half of it!

So more news on that coming later. Anddd...I'm sick of dog and cat piss. Anddd...I haven't rewritten my paper yet. Anddd...the new Alkaline Trio album came out today and I need to go buy it!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100223/music_nm/us_pickle That made Yahoo! News. Maybe that means there's enough people out there who know Nickelback are terrible to make an impact.

And there are some Against Me! videos of them playing new songs live out there on Youtube, so if you're liking Against Me!, check those out. And...uhh...yeah, that's about all I have for today. Insightful, huh? Alex is having a birthday this Friday. Happy birthday! I'm uhh...still gonna do stuff with your sister.

love,
Kyle

Monday, February 22, 2010

I wrote a paper!

So I wrote this paper for College English. It was due over three weeks ago and I wrote it last night. Umm...and I'm gonna have to like completely revise it. Because I use too much of my own opinion! Anyway! Our assignment was to compare two essays and determine which had a stronger claim. So this was how I translated it, which I later found was not entirely correct to do. It's about Facebook.


FACEBOOK ESSAYS: WHY THEY SUCK…
Kyle Wagoner
Kyle Wagoner is a student in a College English class who owns a Facebook page.

Ever since the invention of the internet, people all over the world who previously had no voice have finally found a platform where they can complain about everything and criticize everything that displeases them, pleases them, or even things they could care less about one way or another. Now you don’t have to be an expert on a subject for the world to hear what you think about it. A Youtube comments section is all the further you need to go for proof of this. But I digress…my real point here is that the internet may connect people, but at the same time, it creates a lot of division. And what a better nonsensical debate is there to talk about than the one between networking sites being good, bad, or ugly?

It kind of upset me when I saw that this argument had made it as far as a college textbook when I was assigned to read some pages in my College English class earlier this semester. Here we have a world filled with hate, greed, genocide, war, starvation, tragedy, and countless other environmental and social issues and we’re being assigned to read about two people’s opinions on the subject of Facebook. The sides of the argument are cliché at best. Kurt Soller’s “Facebook: Why I Love It” says he likes connecting with his friends. Sarah Kliff’s “Facebook: Why I Hate It” says Facebook consumes her life. Having a Facebook of my own, I see both of those arguments at least a dozen times a day. I read statuses like, “Should be studying. On Facebook instead.” Or I see where an older friend of mine will meet up with someone they haven’t spoken to in x number of days/months/years and be thrilled to have found them again.

So why do I think both arguments are bad? Well, quite simply, both arguments are pointless. They’re strictly personal opinions. My opinion about Facebook wasn’t shaken an inch while reading either essay. Maybe I’m a little biased since I have one myself and have already been able to develop a personal opinion, but even those who don’t have their own Facebook page probably know the basic concept of it. You sign up, you meet up with your friends, you share what you’re doing or thinking with each other.

Anyway, let’s dig into some examples here. Soller is a staff writer for Newsweek, the essay says. I don’t see why that’s important. How does that make him any more credible than anyone else who owns a Facebook page? Is he or Kliff, who is also a staff writer for Newsweek, a “Facebook opinion expert”? Even if they both were “Facebook opinion experts” due to working at Newsweek, they would still both be equally as credible.

Now, we can look at these essays in a different way: how objective are they? Well Soller thinks that God sent Facebook from to earth as a savior for those who missed the Jesus bandwagon as he says that joining Facebook was one of the three highlights of his senior year in high school right next to graduating and being accepted to college. Kliff, on the other hand, thinks that Facebook is one of Satan’s tools to keep us from living a fulfilling life. I mean, I know I’m kind of exaggerating, but the point here is that there is no grey line. One thinks Facebook is great and cannot be swayed to believe otherwise and won’t consider the other possibility and the one who belongs to the other possibility thinks just the opposite. Soller tries to fight the arguments against Facebook with the history of most inventions initially being looked at with frowns and Kliff fights the arguments against Facebook being good with her opinion of it being filled with pointlessness and mentioning all of her fake friends and meaningless Facebook groups that her friends join.

If I had to make a conclusion from all I just mentioned, I’d say that both writers come out at about being equally as stupid-looking except that Soller pulls from history some examples. That doesn’t cover the fact that he’s flogging a dead horse and arguing that he feels…exactly like half of the people that own a Facebook page. If Newsweek thought this was a good topic to have two of their writers to cover, then I really think that the country does need some new hobbies. Or maybe Newsweek just needs to hire some new writers…or some new directors of telling people what to write about or whatever that position is called. I believe neither essay serves a purpose, but the historical references would make Soller come out on top if you really wanted to make a worthwhile debate out of the two.

love,
Kyle

Saturday, February 20, 2010

I deserve a Grammy...or something

So I Forget played at Tabitha Shoemaker's birthday party last night. Now first off, loading up equipment (all of it, for that matter, including PA and shit) is a pain in the ass when you have to shovel 2 feet of snow across en entire yard to get a clear path from the practice space to a vehicle. It is. No way around that. Secondly, we were kinda like...not prepared to play both practice-wise and equipment-wise. Like our normal guitar has a broken string that Brittney uses and I had no real drum sticks...only Rock Band sticks. I will get to that later.

Okay, so we also didn't have enough cars to take all of our stuff, SO I had to call (and by "call," I mean text) Kylie and say, "Yeah, we need your mom to help us take shit." So Jenise comes and parks in the neighbor's driveway, Brittney and I start walking across the fuckin' shittily shoveled snow-covered yard with tons of equipment. Maybe not "tons," but a lot. Maybe a thousand pounds...probably not that much. Anyway! We carried a quarter of a ton of equipment across the yard and I already had blisters before I left from shoveling. So we get to the venue like an hour later as always and we have to jump through hoops to get the stuff in the door because there's three foot of snow surrounding the sides of the building. Then we set up, I ride with Nick to his house to get another pair of Rock Band drumsticks because I knew mine wouldn't last en entire show. I'll get to that later.

So we're all set up and there's like 20 people there. We start playing with the typical "Get a Clue," "for.the.$$," and "That One Song." One stick snapped halfway through "Get a Clue," another broke in the middle of "for.the.$$" and the last two broke a few seconds into "That One Song." So I had to play an entire show with pieces of drumsticks. I broke a broken drumstick for the first time in my life. It was interesting. I deserve a reward for it. Needless to say, it was a kind of sloppy show. Not many people seemed to care that we were even there...but oh well. We got $50 from it, we got to play basketball, we got to rap, and we got to go have Denny's afterward. A nice Friday evening in spite of everything.

Don't play a show with Rock Band drumsticks. Trust me. Buy Vic Firths or Pro-Mark or something.

love,
Kyle

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Revolution! Blah blah blah!

Wow! I have NO idea what the Japanese thing said in my last comment section other than the blatantly obvious "SEX" written there. Maybe that was the point. Moving on.

So! Tomorrow we return to school after being off for two weeks. I've had a paper due for almost 3 weeks but we haven't had the class to turn it in for that long, SO I continue procrastinating. That is the story of my life, as those of you who follow me on here probably have realized. Hence posting something two or three times a month instead of like...27 times. None of that is either here nor there! Moving on again!

New I Forget album. It's gonna kick nuts. That is a promise. It's been over a year since we last recorded, I think. MAN! It's been almost two years since we put out our last album. THAT kinda sucks. But oh well! This one is gonna be worth it. More information on that to come.

So I've been spending a lot of time at Alex (my fellow blogger) and Kylie's house (Kylie being his younger sister). AND my mom is finally catching on to the fact that I'm not going over just to see Alex, when in fact, he's often not home at all when I go over. She instead has realized that I have been going to visit Kylie. Why is that significant! Well! I'm 18, she's 15, I could get in trouble with the law. So Alex! If anything happens between your sister and I, please don't turn me in. Unless, of course, I do something way out of line, then I fully expect to face the legal consequences, but that's not in my nature. Anyway! That chat with my mom was GREAT.

Also my mom told me that she cannot take Zane anymore and she has had her last straw in trying to teach him at home. SO! Zane Wagoner will be returning to public schools in the near future. Zane, I wish you luck.

New Alkaline Trio album comes out in a few days. It's amazing. I'm gonna buy it. Have I covered that? It's great. I'm getting sick of people saying, "They aren't even trying anymore." I don't even know what that means! Seriously, though. It's worth picking up.

And umm...political stuff.

love,
Kyle

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

There's a lot of snow out there...

I got stuck at Alex and Kylie's house with them, Ryan, Echo, and Jade for like...three days. And now I'm stuck with my mom, Zane, and whatever shitty music Zane puts on. Also there are a billion animals here I'm stuck with that I must help care for. The power went out for a day at where I stayed but it apparently lasted for longer here at my mom's and at Brittney's house. I present this as if the people who read my blog don't know what's happening in my life...which is a big reason in why I don't write anymore. I feel like I'm reiterating what the people that read this have lived through with me.

I've had a paper that was due a week ago that I still haven't written because we haven't had that class to turn it in. That's kind of awesome, but it also feeds into my procrastination. I should have been one of those people who didn't realize we had a delay on that Monday morning a week ago and wrote it that night. But I was keeping up with the news and knew we didn't have school. So here I am. Wait, it's actually Tuesday, so it was even longer than a week ago it was due. I assume I'll write it sometime soon because I'm going to get very bored. I watched Forrest Gump last night in lack of things to do. That's actually an awesome movie. I guess I'm kinda late to that party, but I really enjoyed it. Makes me feel like I shouldn't ever waste the time I get in my life.

I really wish there was something in life bothering me so I'd have something good to write about! Damn! How about complacency? I could talk about that. Okay. Complacency. That's when you're satisfied with how your life is going and you quit trying for more. It sucks. Well, it's kind of cool, but it sucks in the big picture. One day you get to a point where you look back and say, "Well shit! I could have been striving for this goal this long ago and instead I just sat there and stared at myself naked!" Or what have you, ya know? I might get complacent and not try in college or something and then one day my circumstances will change and I'll be fucked! It's entirely possible. I'm complacent and sit online all day when I could be out like...improving my physical health or something. Or! I could be doing my homework! Or my senior project or a research paper or something.

Tim says our research paper for British Literature has to be on something in Medieval times. I'd do it on the like..progression of music in that time, but I don't even understand what those terms mean. So maybe that could work to my advantage and I could just make up shit to fill four pages and Mrs. Dean would just think I knew what I was talking about and give me a good grade. I really should get on the ball since by the time we get back in school, it'll be about time to turn all of this shit in. Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffff......

Listen to Refused. They kinda changed my perception on music.

love,
Kyle