Displeasure

Some things recently have been irking me and I have this urge to shout all those out. Instead I decided to (kind of) calm myself down and type this post.

The recent confession pages of schools are annoying me, and really, they tarnish the reputations of schools that I thought were reputable. I shall leave that aside. It is too personal to share.

One thing that I am really unhappy about is the recent 55th Grammy Awards 2013. The Grammy Awards Ceremony was set up to honour musical accomplishments by performers. As the years go by, I don't really think that is relevant.

Firstly, they do not honour all musical accomplishments at the same level. During the show telecast, only a few awards are given out: Record of the year, Album of the year, Song of the year, and a few of the more acceptable and popular genres: Rock, pop, rap and country. The other awards are given out during the Pre-telecast. I am a hard rock fan, and got interested in this whole Grammy Awards thing because I heard Halestorm was nominated (they won the best hard rock/metal performance). Another artist in a more popular genre winning a Grammy would be in a much different situation. They both won a Grammy, they both are good artists, but just because one chose the more popular genre, their award is given out during the live show while the other has their award given out during the pre-telecast. I don't find this at all fair. It's an out right discrimination for all the less popular genres. I think all awards should be given out during the Grammy Awards Ceremony. At least give these artists the fame they rightfully deserve.

Out of the four Rock awards, one was to Halestorm, while the other three, best Rock performance, best Rock song and best Rock album was won by the same artist, The Black Keys. I listened to their famous song "Lonely Boys". Personally, although the song is good, I don't think it deserves two Grammy awards. I started wondering how exactly are artists nominated, and how these awards are won.

After recording companies or individuals submit their recordings, more than 150 experts in the recording industry review and ensure that nominees are in the correct category and are eligible. The list is then given to the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) members to vote in general field and no more than 9 out of 30 of the other fields. The top 5 are the nominees for the award. The final voting ballots are sent to the Recording Academy members for voting. NARAS members are required to vote based on quality alone, and are encouraged, not not required, to vote only in their field of expertise. Doesn't this question the reliability of voters? and P.S. They don't receive nominated recordings.

Reading the criticism received portion is pretty entertaining. It has been criticised for generally awarding and nominating more commercially successful albums instead of critically successful ones. Justin Vernon of the indie band Bon Iver said on stage, "It's also hard to accept because you know, when I started to make songs I did it for the inherent reward of making songs, so I'm a little bit uncomfortable up here." Some also said many awards are dropped on one singer and his/her breakthrough album. There was also two reasons stated for the Grammy awards to be detached from the original: 1, the pursuit of making it a popular show and 2, the "disrespect of cultural shifts as being viable and artistic".

I hope to have faith in mainstream and socially acceptable music once again.

Giving Thanks for What Always Has Been There

I guess it's the tendency of people to take for granted things that's always been there. It becomes common until a point where you assume it'll be there the whole time.

When asked for an event I was grateful for in class, some of them laughed when I said it was getting my first calculator. I don't blame them, it sounded stupid to me too. The calculator is one of many things we take for granted in life. In a math exam, you'll use it to do arithmetic calculations. It saves us a lot of hassle from doing the actual calculations ourselves.

I've always been a careless and "blur" person. A few of my more notable arithmetic failures are "3+3=9" and "16-8=12". It takes awhile for my brain to detect the error in it. Without a calculator, I can't even imagine how many mistakes I'll make in that.

Pardon this weird and disorganised post. My brain's pretty drained from a long week.

In any case my main point is that, we take simple things in life for granted, and we only realise its importance when its gone. Like losing a teddy bear while walking on a long and winding road,  you'll only realise the pain of losing things that have been there for you the whole time, there and then. 

And the answer is not as simple as walking back to retrieve it. 

Once it's gone, it's gone.

You can't turn back the clock.