Postblink

Note: If you’re reading this from my Facebook feed, you may want to stop reading here. I’m going to be writing about what direction the site is going in, what will stay the same, what will be touched on more, and what I’m going to be talking less about. Fair warning.

I’ve been writing music oriented articles on Postblink since the site was created. I don’t know if they’re good or bad but they’re my thoughts on what ever happens to be on my play list at the time of the writing. This will continue. Not only will this continue but I’m going to attempt to get more structured pieces together as far reviewing full length releases. This includes an actual rating system. I didn’t do this from the start because I’ve never looked at the site as anything more than an outlet for my thoughts. That’s changing. Judging from the site’s logs, I’m getting hits on albums I’m talking about, new songs, and shows I’ve attended. So I’m going to try being more consistent by applying the rating system. I’m still going to ramble on with my pointless thoughts — they’ll just be accompanied by stars or hearts or bunnies. Who knows?

I’ve also been writing a lot of personal articles. My life, my thoughts, my aspirations of music. This will also continue but with an exception. I’m not going to talk about politics anymore. It’s really fucking annoying — no, not what I have to say. I’m always brilliant, so screw you. It’s just annoying to keep defending a tired cause. Okay, and maybe I was a little annoying. I guess I feel a little jaded on the whole political spectrum. Left-to-right, it’s all a bunch of bullshit. I have my thoughts, my ideals. I have my beliefs and they are strong. I’m just not into talking about them on a largely public medium anymore. If you want to chat one-on-one with me about it, you know where to find me.

For a while I had intentions of having multiple authors on the site. It didn’t work out so well. The group I picked out either didn’t maintain an interest in writing or moved on to create their own blogs. That’s fine, and I’d even encourage it. What it means, and I’ve been thinking about this for a while, is that the site once again becomes more identified with me. That’s why I’ve gone back to writing longer, more personal articles over the last six months. Guest articles will always be welcome however.

I guess I don’t really have anything else to add. It’s cold in Iowa. Single digits cold. That’s not much of a conclusion but I’ll leave you with it anyways.

Fall asleep all alone
Hear your voice in the dark

Lose myself in your eyes
Choke my voice, say good night
As the world falls apart

I haven’t posted very much on Postblink since last November’s election. School got very hectic for a bit and only got more hectic with the passing of a family member. Since then, I’ve missed putting out my thoughts on several new albums, movies, and other forms of entertainment. That was a temporary absence.

I transferred my personal blog from LucasJ.Net to Postblink in July of 2006. It has since contained numerous rantings, a few random attempts at playing music, and random thoughts about music, movies, tv, politics, and more. See, the year prior to that summer of drunken shenanigans, I had met up with these kids that were all trying to learn their instruments – except the drummer. He had pretty much gotten his shit down. We were spending many a Friday night and Saturday morning in this small green room. I could barely walk around in it, else lose the top of my head to a ceiling fan. We were playing a lot of blink-182 covers and I slowly fell in love with this band who’s name became synonymous with fart and dick jokes in the 90’s.

At some point that winter we had decided it would be a good idea to play some blink-182 covers at our high school talent show. At some point during that decision we had also decided that I would sing – big mistake right? Don’t let your ears be frightened. I never sang. Unfortunately (depending on your perspective) I had surgery to correct some nerve damage caused by a broken ankle the previous year and had enough trouble walking around. Standing up even for a few minutes of music was out of the question. I was pretty bummed.

Luckily for the other guys, I had a friend who was pretty stoked about music and liked what we were doing. I then suggested he take my place.

Essentially one winter had changed my thoughts on music. I began listening to the self-titled blink-182 religiously. Regardless of what you thought of the 3 piece punk band from SoCal, you had to respect their self-titled work. The recording tecniques and production values were amazing. Producer  Jerry Finn, who passed last August, had forged this group into a music machine.

But I jumped aboard the blink-182 boat too late. They announced their hiatus in early 2005 and shortly after we began to hear rumors of a new Tom DeLonge project. Angels and Airwaves came, followed by Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker’s +44. I saw Angels a few times and, while I enjoyed what they were doing, they weren’t blink. I caught +44 and The Matches at a club up in Minnesota that will forever be one of my favorite shows ever. I was feet away from Mark Hoppus and was watching Travis Barker dominate his set with one hand while his other sat in an arm brace with a ciggarette.. But of course, it still wasn’t blink.

Postblink was born sometime in the midst of all of this. During a sober moment in that summer of 2006 I had been listening to blink-182 all day. I decided, for some reason, to purchase a new domain. Postblink just seemed to fit. Of course, I didn’t even realize at the time that the music scene was changing drastically. Pop punk bands with effiminite lead vocalists began cranking out bubble gum lyrics to a generation of 12 year old girls. And the nerve of it all! More than half of them did it all while listing blink-182 as their biggest influence. Yeah, times were definitely post-blink. Flavor of the month bands began getting air time on the radio. Warped Tour began to die for many people. I remember watching girls come back from the front of a crowd watching My Chemical Romance with bloody noses, being carried to the med tent.

Things have gotten a little ridiculous in the “punk” scene. Of course, you can argue that the genre is wide and undefinable – whatever.

My point is that things have gotten a bit sad in that department for me. But of course, this past winter we found out that the members of blink-182 had began talking again. Rumors ran rampent. Then, in the days leading up to the Grammys, David Kennedy let loose that blink-182 had began recording a new album. Of course, Mark, Tom, and Travis showed up on stage at the Grammys to announce they were, in fact, back together.

And now the summer of 2009 looks a little more sunny and a little less bubbly. I don’t know that blink will influence a new generation of bands that will overcome the likes of Metro Station, but I am hopeful. And perhaps I’ll see you on their tour this year.

Postblink will stay Postblink. I will badger the hooligans that contribute to the site to do so more this summer. It may start slow for a just a bit, until school is done.

But hey – if you’re bored you can always go check out my friends at the adventuresofbradandjordan.

PS – Since I was one of the few people in the blogosphere not to comment on the Phelps marijuna debacle, I shall do so now. DUDE GOT HIGH?! So what? 42% of the country’s population that is 18 or older smokes pot. You can make a fuss if he decides to go on a meth binge.

Postblink is looking for contributing authors interested in writing about politics, opinions, music, movies, technology, science, and more. The sky’s the limit, provided you can put together sentences and they’re not drama-filled rants about your emo ex-boy/girlfriend’s poor dying dog.

Specifically we’re looking for thought provoking articles about life as a young adult and authors that can express the way our generation views society and culture. We’re mostly interested in guys and girls in the age range of 18-25ish. You do not have to be a college student to contribute to Postblink. You do not have to share any other member’s ideas or have common opinions on things. You do have to be respectful with counter-opinions.

It is not important that you have perfect grammar or writing skills. If you feel that you can contribute valuable articles, I will take care of the editorial aspect of things. You do have to have, at the very least, the ability to string together sentences that don’t require a decoder mechanism to be interpreted. Previous writing experience is great, but not required.

If interested please contact me at lucasj218 AT gmail DOT com with the subject “Postblink Author”. Please include in your message at least your first name, interests and a short paragraph about why/what you’d like to contribute to the site.

If accepted I will get back to you with how to create an account here, if you haven’t already, and some basic instructions for logging in and posting. After your account is made I will set up your author privledges.

Earlier in the year I tested the idea of multiple authors contributing with some close friends, and this is simply an expansion of that. I would encourage you to contact me only if you’re willing to post at least every other week, however you will be allowed to post as often as you want.

Did you hire a bunch of shitties for this horrible design concept? Why did you invest time and resources into this? Why are you trying to fix something that isn’t broken?

There was only one flaw with Facebook and that was the introduction of applications. While at least that concept had promise and had actual useful functions, it was a destroyer of bandwidth. Between rotting zombies, fucking vampires, and pointless additional walls, you just couldn’t escape it. And then on top of all the random ass images from those shitty apps, someone went and made an application to display random ass images without a purpose. Yeah, even I have the bumper sticker application. Everyone does and that’s why it takes full minutes to view someones page sometimes. Whatever, it’s been implemented and I understand that. Great. Whatever. Let’s use it.

But then you pull this horrible three-column design out of no where. I undestand you needed to get applications off of the front page of people’s profiles. I’m completely for that, but why did you have to completely remove any originality Facebook had in doing so? I liked the old layout. I’m pretty sure most people liked the old layout.

So here’s a better option. Let’s go back to the old page but rip out the ability to put apps on your front page. Instead, we basically do what you had started doing with extended profiles, but make it mandatory. Put a giant ass button at the top that would load a second page dedicated to an user’s application. If someone wanted to view them, they then could. That’s basically what you’ve done here. . . You didn’t need to include the new eye-raping design feature.

I didn’t need that. If I wanted it, someone could have written an application. . .

I don’t believe, by any stretch of the imagination, that this is an issue with the majority of residents in small towns. I don’t even think it’s an issue with the majority the people in mine – but a conversation with a high school upperclassmen last night was pretty disheartening and really showed me how racism and ignorance are still prominent.

Yesterday I was at a friend’s bonfire and after hearing the word “nigger” thrown around several times and hearing my friends talk about the Nazi mini-flags they had bought at a gunshow, I wasn’t really phased-I knew the people engaged in the conversation and I didn’t really think they meant half of the stuff they were talking about, regardless of the fact that it did bother me. I have black family and close family-friends.

Then the conversation came about how some Aryan supremacy organization had written a statement indicating they would assassinate Obama should he win the Presidency. I mentioned that I had full intentions of voting for Obama and asked how they felt about that.
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