On today’s episode of Questionable Taste: a thing so foul and reviled that speaking the truth earns me the scorn and distaste of thousands.

I like Jar-Jar Binks.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, perhaps you would like a picture as part of my explanation?

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When I was in middle school, there was this boy I liked.

It wasn’t my first crush. My first crush was actually kinda boring except for the day we played Where in the World is Carmen San Diego and he kept rubbing his arm against me.  I think that was an accident, but I’m not sure.  Anyway, he turned out to be kind of an entitlement brat and also a misogynist later, but who knows what the hell a misogynist is in the fourth grade?

So fast-forward to, oh, about sixth grade.  This boy was totally the cutest boy in school, or at least I thought.  He was at my bus stop every morning, which was also a plus.  The minus was that he had a girlfriend, and his girlfriend was my best friend’s other best friend, and you know how middle school is.   So I wasn’t really allowed to talk to him.  But I did name my teddy bear after him, which is a little creepy now that I think about it.

It was Valentine’s Day, and we were at the bus stop.  It was unseasonably warm, and me, being the really nerdy girl I was, was totally decked out in heart-themed clothes.  And leggings, because this was the 1990s.  I was also wearing this little red locket necklace that my parents had given me when I was about four.  It was supposed to look like the one from the Annie! Movie, and people thought it was cute because I had curly, red hair.

So anyway, there I was, in all my Valentine-themed tacky splendor, and everyone got to the bus stop, and the boys at the bus stop were showing off their Valentine’s Day gifts for their girlfriends, which were mostly, you know, tacky jewelry with rhinestones.  And it was about then that Crush Boy realized it was Valentine’s Day.

And he didn’t have a present.

So Best Friend Girl turned to me and started demanding that I give him my necklace, that I’d had since I was four, so Crush boy could give it to his girlfriend.  And then all the other girls at the bus stop chimed in.   I felt cornered; I didn’t want to give away my necklace so the boy THAT I WAS GOING TO MARRY SOMEDAY could give it to another girl.  But they were all hounding me, and none of them were wearing any jewelry, and—

Then I realized that I was wearing this ugly silver bangle bracelet.  The clasp was kind of broken and the inside scratched at my wrist and left little red marks, and I think it was actually aluminum alloy and not silver.  So I offered him that, instead.  He thanked me, called me a lifesaver, and wrapped the bracelet up in loose leaf.

He called me a lifesaver.  Wasn’t that awesome?

Two weeks later, he’d broken up with the girlfriend.  I have no idea what happened to the bracelet.  She probably dumped him because it was so ugly.

In the online music culture these days, there’s a lot of question about when it’s okay to “share” music. Some people will tell you that music belongs to the fans, regardless of how they get it. Others are impassioned in their belief that music and the profits from it belong to those who create it. But in a music industry where bands performing live are closing shows by asking the crowd to check out their MySpace page, there will always be free music online in some form.

While some bands are refusing to parcel out their albums via iTunes, one band has decided to upload their entire album to their website. For free. While this might not be a big surprise coming from a popular and commercially successful band, it’s certainly not the status quo for a little band just starting out.

Empires, a five-member band from Chicago, started recording their album, Howl, last year. After a full year spent writing, refining, and recording, they released the full album on the web this past May, and the last download count for it that I saw was somewhere over 20,000.

Where did people hear about this band? Well, the guitarist, Tom Conrad, used to be in a band with one of the members of Panic at the Disco and was once the guitarist for Panic labelmate The Academy Is…, but other than that the band consists mostly of dudes under twenty-one who work in coffee shops and sleep on each other’s couches. Not exactly the group you’d expect to be giving their work away for free.

Of course, none of this would be remarkable if the album wasn’t good. And it is. Everything clicks together like it was meant to be, and over that Sean Van Vleet’s words and vocals can make you ache. A particular seller for me is that the sound of the album is very diverse overall. “Spit the Dark”, a song more reminescent of Death Cab for Cutie segues into the harder, faster “I Want Blood”, rolicks into Queen-inspired harmonies on “Believe!” and chills into the haunting “Under the Bright Lights” before exiting mournfully with “My Poor Lover”, a song that I’d expect more from a singer/songwriter than a full band.

And of course those are just five songs from a fifteen-track album.

So go. Be free. Download Howl at weareempires.com without the guilt of having your hand in a musical cookie jar. And don’t worry, if you like the album so much you want to pay for it, the band has released limited pressings of it and are currently talking about selling an iTunes version… with all proceeds going to a children’s hosiptal to provide free healthcare to children with financial need.

November.

If you’re American, the month brings up memories of Thanksgiving dinner, and Black Friday, when the Christmas season begins in earnest.

If you’re British, you have Guy Fawkes day, bonfires, and pyrotechnics.

If you’re Canadian… well, I’m sure you get the point. November means a lot of different things to a lot of different people of all religions and nationalities.

But, if you’re a writer, a wanna be writer, or even someone who just dabbles from time to time, November means something quite different.

It means plotting, and characters, words on a screen, or a piece of paper, caffeine, word counters, stress, mania, meetings in darkened coffee shoppe corners, and if you’re either lucky or damned determined, fifty thousand words by the thirtieth.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short) is a personal stakes competition in which writers – professional, amateurs, wannabes – challenge themselves to write fifty thousand words in thirty days. It seems like an almost insurmountable amount, but broken down, it equals 1667 words, per day.

That looks a lot more manageable now doesn’t it?

People from all over the world take part in this competition. Their opponents are the words that must be written. The only prize for winning is knowing that you’ve accomplished something, that you finished something, in so short a time.

The NaNo-ers, as they’re called, often come back year after year, whether they win or not, to compete again and again. They hold discussions on forums that include everything from plot holes, devices, and recalcitrant characters, to recipes, real life frustrations, and how to not only cram for midterms or finals, but also make the daily word count.

Off shoots of the competition have also sprung up, all over the web. National Novel Editing Month (NaNoEdMo) is in March. It’s, ostensibly, for editing your NaNoNovel. There are various year long competitions all over.

They all have one thing in common. The base premise is to get people to sit down, and write. Nonsense, fantastical worlds, a fictitious account of your high school years, whatever it is, the words appear and they are your own.

Even if you think you can’t write, NaNo is perfect. It’s all about getting the story down, rather than worrying about any of the mechanics. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, it just has to be your own words.

November, with all its connotations, is anything but a boring month.

Write on.

Welcome to the first installment in my series Questionable Taste. *happy dance*

I chose the title Questionable Taste mostly because the title Things I Like That I Probably Shouldn’t Like But I Do Like Anyway So Screw It All was too long. The crux of the matter is that I like lots of things that make me sort of embarrassed. But I’m sure you do to. So I thought I would pick one of my questionable loves and explain why I love it so much and why I probably shouldn’t. And away we go!

The honour of being first in this series goes to the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender.

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Gotta be honest with you, I’m super-glad that America’s Election Day is tomorrow.

I am an American. I do not live in America, so I’ve generally missed seeing and hearing political ads on television or on the radio, unless I’ve specifically sought them out on the internet. I don’t see signs up on yards endorsing my neighbors’ political choices. I’m always a little behind that 24 hour news cycle because of the time difference. But I’ll still be delighted when all has finally been said and finally been done.

Firstly, I’ve been teaching about the election process in my Current English class (it’s like current events, except in English). Most students get these glazed looks over their faces and zone out; other than one student, I really may as well be teaching a class of zombies. It is extremely frustrating for me to teach a class that, for the most part, couldn’t care less about the words coming out of my mouth. There is exactly one student, “Mac,” who knew who McCain was, and that he was the Republican candidate, whereas Obama was the Democratic one. She once asked which one our blond-haired, blue-eyed foreign exchange student was voting for. The foreign exchange student replied, “I’m only seventeen… and also from New Zealand.”

Secondly, I find myself getting into really random conversations with perfect strangers. Now, I don’t actually speak Japanese too well, so these conversations always turn awkward. Inevitably. These brief attempts at communication are like ectopic pregnancies: completely not viable, and if allowed to progress for too long, would probably result in internal bleeding, and possibly death. To illustrate my point, here is a rough transcript of a conversation I had this past spring while waiting for a bus with two little old ladies (I may have taken some creative liberties): Read the rest of this entry »