Category Archives: Rantastic

Sometimes, I rant. Sometimes, people think my rants are funny. Usually it’s just silly and everyone ignores it. Your call.

Why I Don’t Like @PorcelainBlack’s "Naughty Naughty"

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Porcelain Black

Porcelain Black

When I first heard Porcelain and the Tramps, I wanted to grab everyone I saw by the lip and pour her songs into their ears. Porcelain and the Tramps was just Alaina Beaton, some lyrics and heavy industrial music she wrote and played herself. I couldn’t get enough. When I heard Alaina had finally landed a record deal, I couldn’t wait to hear new music and to finally have a polished version of the songs I’d downloaded from a friend who’d most likely downloaded it from a friend who downloaded it from a friend… You get the picture.

After waiting something like six years, she’s finally releasing singles… under the name Porcelain Black. Her first single, “This is What Rock ‘N’ Roll Looks Like,” came out a few months ago, and her second single, “Naughty Naughty,” “leaked” a few days ago. Before “Naughty Naughty” came out on YouTube, a three-song teaser “leaked” as well, featuring “Mannequin Factory,” “La Di Da Di,” and “Love Someone.” We were promised that her next single was coming out soon, so I listened to the teaser a few times and hoped that it wasn’t any of the three.

It’s not that I hate the teaser songs. I don’t hate them. I just don’t like them. They’re catchy and I find myself singing them all the time… but they’re not the Porcelain I’m used to, which is definitely the biggest part of the problem. I thought we were getting a more polished version of Porcelain and the Tramps when she landed this record deal, but it’s obvious that we’re getting the polished, pop version of Alaina.

That’s not the whole problem, though. The song “La Di Da Di” from the teaser goes like this:

La di da di da di,

we like to party

I know you hate it ’cause I flirt with everybody

La di da di da di,

we just wanna party

It’s all about fun and games until I hurt somebody

It’s the second song in the teaser; skip to 1:14.

I thought it was catchy, in a mindnumbing pop-y way, but fun in a guilty pleasure sort of way.

When her single was “leaked” — and I say so with quotes because she and producer RedOne have made it pretty obvious that it was an accidentally-on-purpose, because-we-love-you leak — I couldn’t get to my laptop right away and my phone refused to play the video for some reason, but I had a funny feeling that the “Naughty Naughty” single was the same as the “La Di Da Di” snippet I’d heard. I’ll let you take a listen.

The lyrics?

Naughty, naughty, naughty,

we like to party

I know you hate it ’cause I flirt with everybody

Naughty, naughty, naughty,

we just wanna party

It’s all about fun and games until I hurt somebody

I don’t like being tricked. I mean, I guess it was pretty obvious that the three teaser songs were probably going to be singles, but I really thought we were getting to hear something different.

My third issue with this song is how shallow and flimsy it is, albeit a good dance tune. “We just wanna party?” Compared with the lyrics to, say, “The Preying Mantis,” it just falls flat. Take a listen:

To visually compare, here is the chorus:

I hung you on a limb

made you bend over

backwards on a sin

quit crying on my shoulder

there’s nothing left to say

we’re beautiful garbage

throw it all away

wash you off in the shower

I love Alaina’s voice. I love her lyrical talent. I love her musical talent. I feel like all we’re getting out of this Porcelain Black deal is her voice, and even then I feel like she’s a lot less aggressive on these songs than her Porcelain and the Tramps songs. If it wasn’t obvious after hearing Lil’ Wayne* on her first single that this is not at all the same deal, it’s pretty obvious now.

I can only hope that she’ll release a polished CD of her Porcelain and the Tramps songs as she promised, and while I’ll definitely be picking up her currently untitled Porcelain Black album, I don’t think I’ll ever like it as much as I love her PATT songs. She has so much potential. I hate to say it, but it’s being wasted; I feel like she would be just as successful — if not more — if she went with her earlier style.

I guess I’m just horribly disappointed, but I can’t really complain. It happens all the time.

*Do not get me started on that. I know they’re friends, and I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but… seriously?

Why I Left Web Design, and Why I’m Looking Toward a Brighter Future

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How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell, by the Oatmeal

How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell, by the Oatmeal

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been coming to a realization that didn’t completely form until I read and commented on this post by my friend and pen pal Brooke. As I reassured her that she would be great at her new position, I realized that sometimes the choices we make are scary, but they’re well worth it in the long run. I cut myself off from an industry where I could make at least $15 an hour, not work weekends, and rake in a shit ton of money for something I used to view as a hobby, and traded it for a job in retail where I make minimum wage, work weekends, and only work about fifteen hours a week and struggle to pay my bills. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been wondering if I am a crazy person. My dad even asked me the other day why I didn’t just get another web design job and go to school while working there.

“Because I hate it,” I said, and though it’s true, I could still suck it up and do it for the money. I just choose not to. Instead, I choose to work a relatively bottom level job because, at the end of my shift, I don’t have to think about what happened at work. I don’t have to feel sick to my stomach wondering when the next paycheck will come in, or why I sit at a desk all day mindlessly writing code and eating because there’s nothing else to freaking do. I don’t have to feel sick to my stomach waiting for a design I put my heart and soul into to get ripped apart by a superior, or change a design every five minutes because a client can’t make up their mind.

I may not be where I want to be right now, but I’m going to. As long as I keep looking at the big picture, I can remember that this too will pass and soon enough I’ll be in the career I want to be in: an editorial assistant at a fiction publishing company, sitting at my desk and reading through the slush pile, helping other writers get published, and getting my foot in the door of the publishing industry so that, someday, I’ll get published, too.

(Of course, I have no problem doing some web design-y stuff for friends or myself, very occasionally.)

Off My Mind: I Hate Waiting

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I’m good at a few things, but I’m not good with waiting. Patience is most certainly not my virtue. Everyone who knows me knows this. Admittedly, since meeting Mike, I’ve gotten a lot better, because patience is his virtue; it’s hard to always have a hot head when the person you spend the most time with is so relatively calm.

Still, I’m not good at playing the waiting game.

Right now, two people I am very close to are wondering if they have cancer. Breast cancer. And I can’t do anything other than wait, the thing I suck most at. I’m trying my hardest to just write this story right now — that superhero story I tweeted about last week — but I just can’t, and I have to admit that I’m just too weighted down by all of this waiting to really concentrate.

Watching Grey’s Anatomy — one thing that always takes my mind off of all the things that bother me — is not helping, because I’m on Season 5 and Izzy is battling cancer. It’s just everywhere right now and I’m having a hard time dealing with it. Noni and Aunt Martha are battling breast cancer, Aunt Rikki may be battling breast cancer, and now someone else I love — who I’m not going to name just yet because it’s too early and I’m not sure who knows, so there’s no sense in freaking anyone out right now — may be battling breast cancer too, and I’m sick of waiting.

I’m just not good at it.

Fall is In the Air, and It’s Not What I Thought It’d Be

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My daily uniform

My daily uniform

While scrolling through my Facebook homepage, the title “Fancy Sweats” caught my eye. I clicked on the photo and sighed. The outfit worn by the model would be pretty much exactly what I would be wearing to class right now, minus the ugly Seventies print. Switch out the heeled booties for a pair of flat ones, though, and you’d have my daily college uniform. Right now, I’d be strolling across campus, books and coffee in hand, on my way to class. I’d be breathing in the scent of the weather changing while listening to a lecture about writing. And okay, even though I accept that the timing wouldn’t have been that great anyway, I still don’t like it.

Nothing is how I thought it’d be right now, and that bugs the shit out of me. Dammit, why can’t things go my way?! I hate to whine and throw a mini-tantrum, but here we are. Dammit, dammit, dammit!

I know things can’t always go my way. I’d like to think that I’m pretty flexible, but I also really just want to get my shit together. I’m twenty-three. I’ve really been trying here. Can I just have a break, please?!

The paradox is, I wouldn’t change the way things are now; I’m happily, happily, happily engaged — squee! — to the man I love, one of my best friends, and my partner in crime. That makes me pretty happy, to know that even though we’d talked about it a million times, he wanted to make it official, and now it’s actually going to happen.

But dammit I wish I were in school right now, working on the career that I now know I want. Why is it that when I finally figure out what I want, I have to wait?! (And yes, the “voice” in my head that is dictating this as I type it is totally whining like a teenager.) Grr! I could be having lunch with my sister right now, dammit, talking about stupid homework assignments that we have to do and the hot boys in her classes, and the ones in my classes that I can look at but can’t touch. ;)

Sigh.

Thanks for listening. It just hit me really hard when I saw that picture, you know? I’ll still be rocking my fall fashion — and speaking of, I have to laugh that my lazy style is now H&M’s push for the fall season — and I’ll still be walking around with a coffee in my hand, but there won’t be any textbooks. At least, not yet.

January really can’t come any faster.

♦

This is eerily fitting.

This is eerily fitting.

Updated 12:28pm: After publishing this post, I scrolled down my Facebook homepage a little further and found the above quote that Let’s Drop a Love Bomb posted. How’s that for fitting?!

Why America is Like a Spoiled Eighteen-Year-Old Kid

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I rarely get political here, but I feel like I should at least write something about everything going on here in the country that I call home.

America has no credit rating. It’s basically like a spoiled kid turning eighteen, applying for and getting approved for a credit card, using it to buy a car, a flat screen, and a whole closet full of clothes, and then realizing when the bill comes in that they never had money for any of it and will be paying it off for the rest of their life. It’s bad enough when you’re a naive kid with a piece of plastic in your pocket, and your credit card company basically owns you, but it’s pretty terrifying when you’re a country with people depending on you for stability and an entire other country basically owns you.

Even worse, America is like an eighteen-year-old kid who doesn’t have a job; this country exports so little, it’s ridiculous. I remember reading about trade when I was in elementary school and there was such a thing as a Geography textbook; we learned about each country’s different imports and exports, and read about natural resources and their role in trade. We also read about the history of America’s trade, and looking back now, we went from a country with a good balance of import and export to a country almost solely importing, which is basically the same as having a bottomfeeding uncle for a relative. For example, I don’t understand why we, when we have so much of it, import most of our oil and export only a little. We could very easily be self-sufficient with the oil we do have, while exporting much of it to make money, but we don’t, and it doesn’t make sense to me.

Another example is all of our made-in-China clothing. We certainly have the resources here, but because it’s cheaper to have a tee shirt made by a child, we elect to import it instead. Hell, even Barbie, the all-American doll, is made in China, Indonesia, and Malaysia. My sister and I used to make a game of checking Barbie’s lower back to see where she came from.

We are a greedy, lazy people, and it’s going to be the destruction of what our forefathers worked so hard to build, unless something changes, and soon. We need to focus less on politics and more on bettering our country, but the game of politics has become exactly that — a game — and most likely won’t change anytime soon.

TL;DR
Dear America: Please get a fucking job.