Can someone PLEASE tell me what the HELL she was thinking when she bought this dress?
[EDIT:] Yeah, it was that hideous… They removed it… (post moved to side)
Tag Archive for 'rant'
I’ve got this problem/gift that haunts me to this very day.
Historically, when it came to intimate relationships with a certain gender, that isn’t mine, I’ve been able to see the future.
I know, I know, “impossible, no one can see the future!” You say. But I insist. Give me one, maybe two months, at the longest half a year, and I can tell you the very quality of the relationship that will have it ripping at the seams, given time. And thus far, I’ve never been wrong. Take Jen and I. I’ve got nothing… And you know what? Still strong after a year and a half.
But I’m not talking about certain significant others here. I’m talking about the Miss America Pageant.
A few days ago I blogged about a certain Reality TV show Miss America lowered themselves into recently, Miss America: Reality Check. Now, my gut instinct is to toss you a link to the show’s website, and I’m going to (you can find it here), but that’s not without a cacophony of protest from my better judgment.
By now you already know I am not a fan of the idea.
Take a piece of America’s history, an icon, if you will, and exploit it. Great idea. One of the toughest stereotypes for the Miss America Organization to overcome has been the idea that we are nothing more than a “Beauty Pageant,” it’s a struggle as old as time, and now TLC wants turn MAO into a reality TV show. So now, not only is it still a Beauty Pageant to most, but now it’s cliche.
But its not just that. Over the years the Miss America Pageant has remained primarily unchanged, largely unmolested by time. Timeless.
So what do we do? We take something that is Timeless and we make it better, we make it Modern. Brilliant.
One of the wonderful things about tradition, about “timelessness,” is if something is timeless, it can’t truly die. Something that is timeless exists in it’s own little world, it’s own bubble of protection. It’s the reason why nothing will beat the original Dracula. It can be remade and remade to high heavens, but we will always look back to the original for the inspiration, while remakes come and go with the wind.
Remakes, remasters, remixes can be forgotten. Sure, they can be popular for a time, but because they are “modern,” tailored to a generation, they are a fad, and fads fade when modern moves on.
Yet it gets worse. If Reality Check were one of a kind, without competition, it would at least thrive for a short time, a season or two in the lime-light. But we aren’t so lucky. Sure, we have the “original” thing going for us, but now we have to compete again (as if competing against Miss USA wasn’t bad enough), now we have Crowned pushing in on us.
So now we not only have to fight the stereotype of the Beauty Pageant, but heads with Miss USA, and conform to the Modern appeal, but now we have to bend over backwards to struggle for network TV ratings against a free form “pageant” that, unlike us, doesn’t have traditions or morals to consider in it’s programming.
Mark my words, this is the beginning of the end of the Miss America of old. This is the end.
Ok, I shoot for Miss Maine, sure. This, in and of it’s self, doesn’t mean I actually LIKE pageantry, or the pageantry world. Well, the stereotypes anyway. Because, anyone who’s had words with me on the subject knows very well that I actually DO like pageantry, and will defend it tooth and nail if I have to. Provided that by “pageantry” you talking about Miss America, and not Miss USA, Donald Trump’s… ish…
Enough with the sentence fragments; I like pageantry. That said, I just about shit myself when the executive director of Miss Maine asked me to post the following video on the Miss Maine front page.
“Audrey,” I said, after I got over my slack-jawed terror, “um… this doesn’t really… I don’t… get it.”
“Haha,” comes the voice of reason, “yeah, it’s a joke, they’re trying to make fun of-”
“US!” I exclaimed. “They did a good job, what is this all about?” I inquired, even more confused now than before I had called.
So, yeah. Third week into school and we’re still alive. That’s some thing to be proud of, right?
All the incoming students came in on the first, which was an image straight out of hell if there ever was one. Figure, there are 9 floors, 37 students per floor, with an average of 10 of them being incoming students. Thats not to say that only incoming students came in on the first either… That said, about 130 students arrived in Bell Hall (thats right, I’m only talking about one of three dorms) from 7am to about 11am on the first of September. Now, consider that each student is traditionally accompanied by Mom and Dad and you have tripled the foot traffic. Add another 80 or so for the odd brother, sister, aunt or uncle, and your looking at 400 pairs of feet, accounting for over 1000 trips trough the lobby, and nearly 45 personal attempts at suicide. Per RA. (in case you didn’t get that, that was a joke)
Moving on.
So, I was looking at visitor statistics for no steam shovel yesterday afternoon, and I came across something very unnerving, and, a little bit funny (depending on how you look at it)… I have visitors coming to my site from Susquehanna (or in relation to, rather) University.
Evidently there is a new college-search website out there that pools blog posts mentioning various colleges and displays them on the college information pages, and my last post evidently made a blip on their radar…
Needless to say, I was quite surprised to see a few visitors originating from: http://college.mychances.net/college-1274-Susquehanna-University.html. Yet, in a way, it was a pleasant surprise…
I don’t know how it finds posts mentioning these colleges. I didn’t link to the university home page (and won’t) and I highly doubt the school has a ping-back server… As far as I can tell it identifies posts based on tags (as thats the only thing that identifies the university, other than the text, in my post). If thats the case, they must find pertinent posts via Technorati. Very sneaky.
How ever they do it, maybe now I can say all those unpleasant things about SU that I have been harboring for so long, and someone will actually read them… Excellent…
Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have a listing for NESCom, so all my praise will unfortunately fall on deaf ears… Alas… Can’t win them all… 
Jenifer and I are going Kayaking this afternoon. Where to, I have no idea, but it will be fun never-the-less.
She should be arriving shortly, so I should probably get things cleaned up a bit before she arrives.
Hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend.
So I am finishing up packing… Heading to Vegas momentarily, but I need to vent real quick, you know, assuming I’m not being censored or anything…
Really, as excited as I am to be going to Vegas over this next week and shooting Miss America, and as much fun as I know I am going to have (well, pretty sure at least), I’m just about ready for it to be over already… I mean really, just how excited can one be to spend the week with chaps that wholly feel that:
“So stay tuned, if you know whats good for you. In the same fashion as last year, I will be posting nearly every step of the way, so expect something up at around 6pm tomorrow evening…”
(offending material)
needs be censored? Thats not my kind of crowd… Sorry…
I know, I know. Its a stupid little thing, but I assure you, its just the beginning. There’s going to be a whole SLEW of nitpicky things that one unnamed soul with stop at no ends to point out and command be rectified.
I honestly believe that, in todays society, all of this uptightedness is just one big misunderstanding. I can’t imagine that people honestly are as anal retentive as they think everybody else thinks they ought to be and are because of it. I mean, how can a person function like that?
Whatever, I’m going, and I am going to have a great time of it, and thats that. I’ll be blogging about it both here, and at the Miss Maine website. Also, photos will be up at some point, but I shall not disclose their location… yet. Check back later for such juicy details.
Peace!
So, its been a while.
It seams like only yesterday I was setting up my newest blog (this one) and writing away. Posting about this and that to an audience that I wasn’t even sure was out there. Then I hit a road bump, got caught up in the end of the semester shenanigans, and next thing I know… POOF! Happy New Year! Then I just put the whole blog thing on the back burner with the full intent to catch up once I got back to school.
Problem is (and this is a whole story in its self) we don’t have internet at the apartment yet, and I have been having computer “issues” using the school wireless network… But its all back together now, and I thought I would check in.
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