I would like to write a little excerpt on Retail. Ahem *clears throat*

Retail, Retail, How I loathe thee

With thine prestigious customers and whining babies

How I long to deliver a message to thy ignorant ears

Of how Much of a Damn I give; just want to make that clear

Your self righteous deals, your greedy eye sneers

Trying to put a leash on our name tagged peers

Retail Retail, it’s not you it’s me

I think we need to see other people, and that way I’ll be free

Digital technology has gone from a plateu effect to a spike in the past few years. We’ve had the convienience of touch phones, Ipods, voice activation and god damn machines that wipe your ass after you’re done with your call of nature (thanks japan!). Tangible hollograms exist in an effort to show off our technilogical prowess, and plastic guitars were invented to sustain that urge to be a “rockstar”.

Yes, plastic guitars. You heard right.

It’s no lie that you, mom, dad and grandpa can now rock out for $59.99 in all of your favorite rock scene fantasies. Dad can sing from the likes of Rush or stone temple pilots, mom can drum to slayer, grandpa can lay some bass lines down on queens of the stone age and you yourself can wail on guitar to dragonforce, just like Herman Li.

Except not really. Sadly, the thing is, this phenomenon called “Guitar Hero” lasts only about a weekend, and in the player’s head. The reason I say this is because the guitar hero community has formed this conscious ego effect that, and wrap your minds around this, if you push the green and red buttons in consecutive order, you’re awarded with a graphic on screen that tells me I’m a rock star. And you believe it.

Not to be a pessimist on the topic, and not to be a nihilist on the open idea of guitar hero, but unfortunately I gotta say just because you can play dragonforce on expert doesnt necsisarily mean you’re good at what really counts:

Real Guitar.

I myself am a guitarist. I’ve been playing since I was 15, and I continue to push myself in the field of learning the instrument. I’m not the best per se…but hey, I like to play. Slash can show up on my doorstep and show me up any day, and I’ll be perfectly fine with it. However, the one thing I don’t agree on is based upon a personal experience: Once I went to a gathering of video gamers and such, and a guitar hero competition was going on. I myself was a novice on guitar at the time, and I was feeling lucky in the competitive matter, so I challenged some snot nosed kid. Not only did I lose it, but I was put down to the nth degree for my lack of plastic guitar skills. I was modest about it and said it’s fine, reminding him I was an actual guitarist, but I was egged on till the point of my departure from the party. It didn’t matter if I could acually play the real thing, no. In his mind he beat me in his virtual battleground, and I was absolutely inferior. I could be close minded and base my opinion upon something that happened once, but oh no, it happened again. and again. and again. and again.  Almost every guitar “hero” I met believed they were above it all; their elitist skills of green/red/blue/green/green/orange was top notch, and that their god like fingers couldn’t be touched.

Hey, that’s cool.

What I’m trying to get at is that many types of activites breed elitism. Football, Hockey, Warcraft (cough), Poker, Drinking. They all require skill to be backed up. However…the elitist jerks that have developed over the past few years over plastic guitaring, a mere hallow shell of the real thing, I believe there is no room to be back up for that. Have some modesty when you’re rocking out that guitar, because at the end of the day, even plastic rockers have to clock in to work and rest.

And Remember, it’s me and the rest of the music community writing the music that’s being coded for you to wail on

Cheers, Reunma

Hello everyone, this is Reunma here with my first post on my very own blogging site. I hope in the nearby future we can have many discussions on topics that range far and wide between. So be sure to check back over time, the entertainment is here