Author: Jackson Palmer

Jackson Palmer is a student studying literature at the Mississippi School of the Arts. He hopes to use the education he obtains there to write novels, short stories, poetry, and scripts for movies, television, and theater productions. Additionally, he would like to write within a number of genres such as comedy, drama, horror, etc. Some of his favorite writers and influences include Billy Joel, John Steinbeck, and Dan Harmon. He hopes to explore concepts and systems of thought such as existentialism, nihilism, and fulfillment within his writing. He would like to thank you visiting his blog and hopefully reading his work.

Surf’s Up Lyrical Review Part III

“Disney Girls”

Disney Girls is a fantastic song, easily one of my top five on this album, and it works on a number of levels.  When I first heard it, I interpreted it as taking itself completely serious without a tinge of irony, and it is an entirely nice song in that way if a little bit cheesy.  I put it on my personal playlist interpreting it in this way.  The lyrical imagery is beautiful and paints an idealistic picture of suburban life.  Lyrics like,

“Patti Page and summer days
On old Cape Cod
Happy times making wine
In my garage
Country shade and lemonade”

and

“Love…Hi Rick and Dave
Hi Pop…Well good morning mom
Love…get up guess what
I’m in love with a girl I found
She’s really swell
Cause she likes
Church, bingo chances and old time dances”

are so impossibly perfect that they make me nostalgic for experiences that I’ve never had.  After interpreting the song in this way and enjoying it, I filed it away, not to be reinterpreted.

It was not until I read Brian Wilson’s memoirs, I Am Brian Wilson that I was forced to recognize that my initial understanding of the song was not necessarily the intended one.  In the book, Brian discusses each of the Beach Boys’ albums, including Surf’s Up.  When he brings up “Disney Girls,” he describes it as a sad song.  I was intrigued because I personally couldn’t imagine a happier song, but what Brian was saying made sense.  He described the song as being about a man who loses touch with reality, and giving the lyrics a second look, I couldn’t argue.  Lyrics like,

“Oh reality, it’s not for me
And it makes me laugh
Oh, fantasy world and Disney girls
I’m coming back”

made Brian’s point obvious.  Suddenly, a song that I had interpreted one way for the entire time I had known it, took on a whole new meaning and a far richer complexity.  This made me appreciate the song even more than I did before and made me far more interested in the music of Bruce Johnston.  This realization also came at a particular time in my life that made me appreciate it even more than I likely otherwise would have.  This song helped me to reevalutate how I look at the world and myself, and what more can be asked of any piece of art than that?

9/10

“Student Demonstration Time”

The Beach Boys were never protest artists like Bob Dylan or John Lennon.  This should have stayed the case, but Mike Love thought otherwise for some reason.  To tell the truth, this song is not just a bad protest song; it’s an attempt at a protest song that turns out to be an anti-protest song.  How does someone mess up this badly?  Let’s take a look.

“Starting out with Berkeley Free Speech
And later on at People’s Park
The winds of change fanned into flames
Student demonstrations spark
Down to Isla Vista where police felt so harassed
They called the special riot squad of the L. A. County Sheriff”

The first few verses such as the one above, play like a highlight reel of absolute tragedies.  Who was asking for this?  What was the point of this?  That will become clear as the song progresses, but you may not be happy with the answers.  When Mike finishes his pointless fan service for absolutely nobody, in come the lines,

“I know we’re all fed up with useless wars and racial strife
But next time there’s a riot, well, you best stay out of sight”

and

“Well there’s a riot going on
There’s a riot going on
Well there’s a riot going on
Student demonstration time.”

I bring up the former verse because of just how disgusting I find it.  There is a lot to dispute about the Vietnam war that I honestly couldn’t begin to contest, but I have no problem having a big problem with what seems to be an attempt to trivialize the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.  Following this with the advice to stay out of sight next time there’s a riot is nothing but gross.  By the time this song was released, a number of the effects of the civil rights movement had been felt across the country, and Mike decided that he’d tell the protesters who had been responsible for those long-needed changes to go home.

I include the second verse/closest thing this revolting song has to a chorus, to show how pointless this song is.  Honestly, this is the most poetic thing to be found in these lyrics, and that is for all the wrong reasons.  “Well there’s a riot going on,” apathetically whines Love over and over… and over.  There’s no meaning hidden in these lyrics and no meaning behind them.  Mike Love isn’t sure why anybody is protesting, and he doesn’t care about why anybody is protesting.  He sees them and feels the need to say something, anything, and he sure does say something.  Unfortunately, it would have been a lot better if he had said nothing.  Only Mike Love could make an homage to a group that can only be read as an insult.  Don’t listen to this song.

1/10

Something Inspirational

When I was in first grade, I decided that I wanted to be a cartoonist for a newspaper.  I honestly don’t remember why, but my mind was made up.  I hadn’t thought of any characters and had no story in mind; these were both bridges I’d cross when I got to them.  I hadn’t read any particular cartoon that made me want to be a cartoonist.  I hadn’t read a lot of cartoons period.  Still, I wanted to be a cartoonist.  I liked the idea of being one.  There was something appealing about the idea of being a cartoonist.

I later decided that I wanted to be a comedian.  I remember what it was that made me want to do this.  My dad showed me a comedian on television. I don’t remember what comedian it was or what their act was.  This was the first time that I understood what a comedian was, and the concept alone was enough to make me want to be one.

My dad didn’t like this idea and tried really hard to talk me out of it.  I’m not sure if he was successful; if I just lost interest; or if I was distracted by something else, but I ended up deciding that I wanted to become a writer.  When I was in second grade, I had a teacher who made me love reading more than anything else, and I decided that I loved reading so much that I wanted to create works that other people could read and enjoy.

I wanted to do this on and off for years until around middle school.  It was then that we had a career dress up day.  I remember specifically not being sure how to dress as an author.  I decided to borrow a set of scrubs and go as a surgeon instead.  My parents latched onto this idea, and I even convinced myself that I really did want to be a surgeon.  I decided that I would be a general surgeon; the stakes for brain surgery were too high.

It wasn’t until ninth grade that I changed my mind.  I wrote a story called “Greg.”  Looking back, it wasn’t a particularly interesting story, but it was my first story in years and the first one that I would consider reflective of my style as a writer.  Despite a lower quality compared to many works I’ve produced since, this story was very significant to my rediscovering my passion as a writer.  Since then, I’ve realized that I am drawn to storytelling.  This led me to the Mississippi School of the Arts where I am currently enrolled as a literary student.

While there, I started writing a fantasy series with a wide scope.  As I wrote it, something felt wrong about it though.  I had imagined very vibrant imagery for the story that I didn’t want to waste page space in describing, but I also didn’t feel like this project was meant to be a screenplay like I had written a few of in the past.  Recently, I decided that the story would work best as a comic and have started working on it as such.

In a way, I’ve circled back to where I started in considering what I wanted to do with my life.  I’m not sure if that’s inspirational or just funny, but I have a lot of feelings about it that I’m not entirely sure that I understand.  I am at least sure that I am happy to be working on a project that I am passionate about.

Surf’s Up by The Beach Boys Lyrical Review Part II

“Take Good Care of Your Feet”

I’m almost unsure how to even approach this song’s lyrics.  They are simply so absurd that I can’t reasonably be upset with them or even disappointed.  Where “Long Promised Road” seems to shoot for the stars and stumbled somewhere along the way, this song is aiming somewhere else entirely.

“Long Promised Road” almost feels like you’ve been offered authentic Italian food and then being given an amateur cook’s first attempt at spaghetti; meanwhile, this song is more like being offered a vanilla Big Mac by a guy holding a Burger King bag, and before you can confusedly ask, “What?” he drops the bag, and a cat runs out of it and into an alleyway.  The thing is, a cat is a good pet, but it surely isn’t a vanilla Big Mac, whatever that would be.  This is a good song, but you’d be lying if you said you were expecting it based on the last two songs from the album.

To fans that followed The Beach Boys through the post-Pet Sounds sixties and into the early 70’s, this song may not be so much of a surprise.  It is actually rather reminiscent of some of the songs from Smiley Smile, particularly songs like “She’s Goin Bald” and “Vegetables.” (both excellent songs by the way.)  This song would fit in perfectly with those on that album, but it’s not on that album; it’s here on Surf’s Up which has so far failed to truly establish an identity for itself.  It’s almost astonishing to think that just a few years ago, this very same band had put out Pet Sounds, one of the greatest and earliest concept albums in all of pop music.

“Take Good Care of Your Feet” doesn’t fit in among the other songs of the album, but that’s hardly its fault.  Let’s take a look at the song itself to see if it warrants almost giving its listeners whiplash for a second time now after dropping their needle on this confused record.  Thankfully, I can say that it does manage to stand on its own two feet (pun intended) despite the album’s identity crisis and it’s own inherent oddness.  Listening to it, I can’t help but think about Brian Wilson’s personal obsession with health during the time he worked on Smile and wonder if it influenced this song in anyway.

Perhaps, this is a cautionary tale from Wilson’s perspective who was not left in good shape himself by the end of the decade.  Maybe it really is just a weird song about feet that Wilson, Al Jardine, and Gary Winfrey thought would be funny.  Either way, I have a soft spot for it.  The lyrics feel very earnest.  I believe that this narrator really does rub his feet with avocado cream.  I believe that he wants me to as well.  For that, I admittedly do like this very weird song.

7.5/10

 

The Godfather Book II Chapter 12

Everyone is aware of The Godfather.  If they’re not aware of Mario Puzo’s 1969 book, they are most likely aware of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 film of the same name and probably even of its two sequels.  Even if they haven’t seen these films, they have likely seen parodies of the classic work of fiction that have been done by everyone from Rodney Dangerfield to The Rugrats.  The franchise’s imagery is universally recognizable, from the puppet master’s hand gracing the cover of the book and movie posters to that of Marlon Brando stroking a cat and wearing a tuxedo with cotton balls stuffed in his cheeks.

This book and its better known films did not invent their genre, but they perfected it.  The Godfather is to the crime genre as Star Wars is to science fiction.  It has inspired generations of artists to create classic works from GoodFellas to The Sopranos.  The Godfather put lines like “I’ll give him an offer he can’t refuse,” and “Leave the gun; take the cannoli,” into our collective awareness and shaped our very views of gangsters and the mafia.  Maybe this is why Book II has been so criminally (pun intended) overlooked.

The Godfather Book II is a two chapter chunk of Mario Puzo’s gangster epic centers around the fictional character of Johnny Fontane, a character that Puzo based on Frank Sinatra.  The character goes far deeper than a Sinatra impression however.  As of the start of the book, we have already been introduced Johnny in Book I.  (Perhaps you’re aware of a certain scene with a hacked-off horse head?)  A bit of a tragic character to begin with, Johnny is a famous singer in Hollywood who has lost his voice to drinking, smoking, and partying.  He is left only able to sing for a short time before needing nearly a month to recover.  This character description alone highlights a major theme of the book, that of the corruption of that which is pure by Hollywood.

Puzo does not hold any punches in his critique of the soulless machine that is Tinseltown.  When the book begins, Johnny is sharing dinner with Sharon Moore, a new girl in Hollywood, in his apartment.  By this time in his career, Johnny is something of a has-been, praying that what F. Scott Fitzgerald said about “no second acts” isn’t a reality.  The description of how this evening plays out is almost alien.  It seems that Johnny, inching ever closer to going to bed with the girl, is acting more out of habit than honest desire.  Still, he tries to get to know the girl and makes it clear that he is not purely interested in an emotionless quickie.  By the end of this evening, when the girl ultimately turns him down, Johnny isn’t so much disappointed as he is understanding.  He understands her motivations in refusing to sleep with the great Johnny Fontane.  Even so, he is clearly somewhat bothered by this, enough to slyly make sure she knows that he hadn’t truly tried his hardest to spend the night with her.

He does feel sorry for this almost immediately, not wanting to belittle her, even offering for her to call her if she ever need someone to talk to.  This endears the reader to Johnny and allows them to empathize with him.  He is our window into the heartless beast of Hollywood, but he is not Hollywood.  He is a human, and he is a victim of the town.  We are given hints of his inner humanity that are contrasted with his familiarity with the vices of the town, but we are not fully convinced of his goodness yet.  For that, Puzo carries us directly to Ginny, Johnny’s first wife.

Johnny calls Ginny after Sharon leaves and asks if he can come over just to talk.  He does so, and they discuss the date as well as Johnny’s new film.  Their interaction is caring but wholly unromantic.  As you read, you feel glad for Johnny that despite no longer being married to her, he has Ginny in his life as a sort of emotional stability.  This is something that Johnny needs since, as was clearly demonstrated on his date, it is not something that he can find from anyone else in Hollywood.

As they talk about his movie, Johnny remains comical, but it is clear to Ginny that he is not well.  Though the success of the movie is imperative to the continuation of his career, it is not clear if this is what Johnny truly needs in his life right now.

Johnny ends up spending the night at Ginny’s house in her guest bedroom and wakes up to a breakfast in bed and his two daughters running to him with hugs.  It feels almost as though we are seeing a perfect, happy, American family.  (Though it is not explicitly stated, it is nearly impossible for one to read this section and not envision a white picket fence outside the house.)

This scene is a stark contrast to the one that follows in which Johnny picks up Tom Hagen, Don Corleone’s lawyer, from the airport.  The Don helped to land Johnny the big role in the movie to begin with, and now Hagen has come to tell him that his chances of winning the Academy Award currently seem to be slim to none.  Johnny is enraged by this, nearly driven to tears.  Hagen doesn’t take long to correct himself, saying that the Don is capable of changing the current circumstances through his influence.   This calms Johnny, but doesn’t change that we have seen a new side of him, one that was grown of a seed planted in him by Hollywood.

A condition that the Don gives Johnny is that he must start along the road toward producing his own movies as he feels that this will help Johnny to support himself in the future if Hollywood big shots turn on him as they have before.  The Don offers to support him along the way, and it is incredible to see how, with the Don’s support, Johnny is easily able to hit the ground running and already be in pre-production of a new film with just a few phone calls.

It is here that the narrative takes a break to reflect on what has brought Johnny to this point in his life.  It discusses his second wife, Margot Ashton, for whom he left Ginny.  She is a personification of the evils of Hollywood, a gorgeous but cold and uncaring starlet who laughs in Johnny’s face in his lowest moment which she is the reason for.  She is the perfect contrast to Ginny, a kind, Italian woman, beautiful but not in the unobtainable way that the women of Hollywood are.

After making the phone calls to begin the turning of gears of his next film, Johnny Fontane makes another phone call, one to Nino Valenti.  Nino Valenti was Johnny’s close friend and singing partner growing up in New York whom he had always promised he would find work for should he make it big in Hollywood.  This, of course, never occurred though Johnny had been a successful movie star.  Now, as the sun rises on a new set of opportunities for Johnny, he calls his old friend to invite him to come to Hollywood in order to correct his past transgressions and please the Don.  This sets up Nino, a character being newly introduced to the alternate dimension of Hollywood as the perfect contrast Johnny, a character with a similar background to Nino but who has been almost entirely appropriated by the town’s twisted ideologies.  Having set up this interaction, Puzo ends the chapter here.

This chapter is a great work of literature.  It is one that both makes the reader empathize with its protagonist and worry for him.  It is also, perhaps, more relevant today than ever before with more and more of Hollywood’s underbelly being exposed to us with every passing day.  As this chapter is only one half of Book II of The Godfather, these themes are further dealt with in the second half where Puzo further ups the scale.  I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone interested in reading this fascinating character study.

Surf’s Up by The Beach Boys – Lyrical Review

Surf’s Up is a very strange album for The Beach Boys.  It came at a time when Brian Wilson was not in a good place.  This led to the rest of the band writing more than on many previous albums.  This yielded some very interesting lyrics to say the least.

“Don’t Go Near the Water”

“Don’t Go Near the Water” is lyrically quite unlike most everything that came before for The Beach Boys, even after such varied albums as Friends, 20/20, and Smiley Smile.  In fact, it seems to have been intentionally written to contrast with many of their early songs about summer, surf, and sun.  The lyrics additionally show an attempted greater consciousness of societal issues which is a common thread throughout the album; this specific song deals with water pollution.  Unfortunately, the song does not do much artistically with this theme which leaves it to feel more like an afterschool PSA than an artistic statement.  A specifically interesting line is, “toothpaste and soap will make our oceans a bubble bath.”  This line in particular stands out as more ridiculous than the rest.  While it seems like it could be a reference to microbeads, this controversy did not arise until recent years and would not have been known in 1971 when the album was released.  Instead, this line reveals that the song was written without much research done into the subject.  This like a number of other lines seems to reveal that the writers were not taking the subject very seriously, and an audience cannot be expected to take something seriously if its creator cannot.

4/10

“Long Promised Road”

The second track on the album, “Long Promised Road,” feels like a much more genuine effort lyrically than the first.  It too deviates from the expectations set for The Beach Boys by their early work, but it does so in a way that seems more for the sake of the song itself and not simply for the sake of doing so as the case seemed to be in “Don’t Go Near the Water.”  The lyrics are sung from the point of view of a person who desperately wants to be happy but is weighed down by the troubles that surround him.  Though he acknowledges the difficulty, he is able to overcome his personal troubles and not allow them to affect his well-being.  The song has a strong sense of optimism about it that feels very honest.  Unlike the early, happy songs from The Beach Boys, this song’s lyrics feel much more mature.  They acknowledge problems, and happiness prevails despite them.  There are moments in the song that seem somewhat over-embellished and clunkily worded such as the lines, “So hard to lift the jewelled sceptre When the weight turns a smile to a frown So hard to drink of passion nectar When the taste of life’s holding me down.”  These lines carry meaning, but they feel as if they’re trying to be something more than they should be.  The metaphors used feel somewhat melodramatic and end up making the lyrics more difficult to relate to.  Overall, the song is not a bad one despite its flaws.  Unlike the song’s protagonist, however, these troubles do weigh it down.

7/10

Sea Slugs

I never really realized how many incredible organisms there are that live on the seafloor.  Sea slugs are so beautiful.  They come in extraordinary colors that I never even realized occurred in nature.  When you hear the word “sea slug” unpleasant imagery comes to mind.  Past interactions with diarrhea-green slugs squirming over cement, leaving slimy trails and drying up like raisins on driveways, make one think of similarly revolting creatures that are only different in that they live underwater as opposed to in your garden.  Seeing these animals as they actually are after having built an expectation for them is completely shocking because they are almost the complete opposite of what you’d expect.  Regular slugs that you’d often see are pretty uniform; all of them fall on a spectrum of green-brown to orange-brown with less common banana slugs being the only thing to break up the dull pallet of land slug colors.  Sea slugs have very little in common with this, coming in technicolor blues, pinks, yellows, and greens.  I don’t know why all of these beautiful animals would be put somewhere where they can’t be easily seen by humans.

I started this blog a long time ago but never finished it.  I’m not sure why, but I looked up sea slugs on google images, and I was stunned by how beautiful they were and thought that they would make a really interesting blog topic.  It turns out it kind of did but only for about half a blog.  I could not stretch it out any further for the life of me, and as I let time pass, I only became less interested in the topic over time.  I am honestly terrified of this happening to me as an artist.  I don’t want to begin a million projects and lose interest in each of them before finishing any of them.  I have started so many things that I’ve chosen to abandon rather than revise as I have changed and they stayed the same.  I really want to change that about myself.  I know that if I don’t, I will never be able to be a productive writer, but that doesn’t make it any easier.  It is something that I will have to push myself to do.  I am working on a book now that I will force myself to finish, and if I get halfway through and rereading the earlier parts has become painful, I will rewrite them so that they meet my new standards.  I will do whatever it takes to make myself do this because I need to prove to myself that I can.

Book

I started writing a book, and I’m super excited about it.  It’s pretty ambitious for a first book, but I’m going to attempt it anyway.  So far, I’ve only written first drafts of the prologue and some of the first chapter, but I have all of the major plot points thought out and charted.

The plot centers around six wizards, one white, one green, one purple, one blue, one yellow, one red.  My concept is that there has been one wizard of each of these colors since the beginning of time, and every time one of them dies, a new one is born that takes the last one’s place.   The only way for one of the wizards to die is for them to use all of their magic which is measured by how long their beard is.  Every time they use some of their magic, their beard shortens a certain amount based on how much magic the act required.  It will grow back but only as quickly as a regular person’s beard would in real life.  They, of course, have plenty of time to wait for this because they can live to be centuries old.

When the plot begins, the reader is first introduced to Ulk, a giant ogre who absorbs energy from the sun and is incredibly strong and in the middle of destroying a village.  As he does this, an army approaches.  Ulk begins fighting the army effortlessly because of how powerful he is.  The army keeps him distracted as four of the wizards, Sylfaen the White, Rockwell the Purple, Garamond the Green, and Bauhaus the Blue, all use their magic together to create an enormous disc in the sky that blocks out the sun over the valley in which Ulk is destroying the village.  Suddenly, Ulk is vulnerable to the attacks the men are attermpting.  This enrages him and causes him to go into a frenzy, killing soldiers left and right.  This gives time for the wizards to cast another spell, putting the ogre to sleep.

This puts an end to Ulk’s reign of destruction.  The wizards walk toward the slumbering beast.  Sylfaen the White, the oldest and most powerful of the four wizards present tells the others that have done well, but Garamond the Green disagrees.  He is enraged that Sylfaen allowed Ulk to take so many lives for so long when they could have stopped him far earlier if Sylfaen had called them together to do so.  Bauhaus the Blue tries to tell Garamond that he should accept that Sylfaen, being their leader of sorts, is very knowledgeable and most likely had a reason for allowing Ulk to exist for as long as he did.  Garamond is beyond the point of reason, however, and teleports away leaving behind a cloud of green smoke.

Sylfaen says farewell to Rockwell and Bauhaus and teleports away to the place he believes Garamond most likely went, Mazakala, a neutral city in the middle of the continent where the wizards meet to discuss the state of the world and also where wizards are raised from birth and eventually trained by the other wizards.  When he appears here, a nurse who takes care of Calibri the Yellow runs to him and tells him that Garamond grabbed Calibri and disappeared again without a word.  This leads Sylfaen to the next place he is sure that Garamond must have gone, Riobe, the domain of Malgun the Red, the sixth wizard who isolated himself from the others long ago and rules his domain wickedly.

Sylfaen stands before Malgun’s giant red clay tower and calls up to him.  Malgun confirms what Sylfaen feared, that Garamond brought Calibri to Malgun and died in the process due to how little magic he had left from the enormous task he’d performed.  Sylfaen knows that he is not powerful enough to retrieve Calibri and does not even know where Malgun has him hidden away, so he leaves because there is nothing he can do.

The plot thus far is contained entirely within the prologue, and the first chapter picks up a century later when Calibri and Castellar, the next incarnation of the green wizard, are both roughly 100 years old.  I won’t reveal anymore about my book at this time, but I am extraordinarily excited about it and can’t wait to write it.

Snapple Facts

If I were to count exactly how many Snapple drinks that I have drunk in my lifetime, I would probably wind up with a single digit number.  I have nothing against the beverages; I just haven’t had that many of them for whatever reason.  Regardless of my limited experience with them, one thing that always intrigued me about Snapple drinks is not the drink at all but part of its packaging.  Snapple drinks come in glass bottles similar to milk bottles that were once used to deliver milk to people’s doorsteps.  Thus, topping them are metal caps.  Under these metal caps are “Snapple Real Facts”, interesting little bits of trivia that aren’t much but are a lot more than most bottles are willing to do.  Some of these facts include, “6. Camels have three eyelids,” “8. a bee has five eyelids,” “30. Fish have eyelids,” and “21. peaches are members of the almond family.”  While all of these will grab a person’s attention momentarily, they might not interest someone enough to lead them to actually look a little bit further into the matter at hand and check the legitimacy of these so-called “facts”.  Unfortunately, I call them this because many of them, plainly and simply are completely nonfactual.  An example of a false “fact” is “20. Broccoli is the only vegetable that is also a flower.”  This is simply untrue and easily disproven given the tiniest bit of research.  One can easily find that artichokes, cauliflower, West Indian peas are all examples of vegetables that are also flowers.  Another fact that’s untrue is #23 which claims that San Francisco’s cable cars are the only mobile national monument, but this is untrue for a number of reasons.  First of all, it is not a national monument at all; it is a historical landmark.  These two designations are very much two different things.  Secondly, there are quite a number of historical landmarks that are, in fact, mobile.  On every front, this “fact” is simply not a fact at all.  These “facts” can’t even stay consistent with each other.  For example, one fact, #399, claimed that the U.S.’s first capital was New York (which is true) while another, #662 attributed the same claim to the city of Philadelphia (which is not true).  While these “facts” are only meant to be fun bits of trivia that a person can share with their friends, they should still have a responsibility to be factual.

Minecraft YouTubers Need to Stop

Minecraft is an okay game that I played years ago.  I still find nothing wrong with the game.  It’s a simple and fun.  It’s fun to build in and track your progress as you go from a little hut made only to escape the night to a mansion.  I want to make it entirely clear that I have no problem with the game.

I don’t even have a problem with the community, to be honest.  It’s mostly just kids that have fun playing the game.  Yeah, they can be cringy, but every kid does some cringy things that they’ll do their best to forget as they get older.  They might as well spend their time playing a game like Minecraft which is harmless enough.

Where my problem lies is with the YouTubers that blatantly lie to profit off of the ignorance of these children who want to watch videos about their favorite video game.  This was brought to my attention when I typed “how to make a spongebob po” into Google, hoping to find out how to make a Spongebob popsicle.  As I typed, I found that something very different was suggested to me, “how to make spongebob portal in minecraft.”  Needless to say, I was intrigued and had to find out what terrible garbage this was.

As it turns out, it was just what I thought, absolute garbage made to fool children into clicking videos full of lies.  I found videos that claimed to inform people how to create a portal in Minecraft that would take them to an alleged Spongebob dimension.

Of course, this makes absolutely no sense.  Spongebob is owned by Nickelodeon which is owned by Viacom.  Minecraft is owned by Mojang which is owned by Microsoft.  Unless there was some sort of licensing deal in place, there would be no way for Spongebob or anything related to Spongebob to exist within Minecraft.  A child doesn’t think about such things however and is simply excited because they believe that their favorite cartoon is now in their favorite video game.

These lies do not stop at Spongebob however.  There have also been videos made describing how to make a portal in the game that will transport the character to a Mario dimension.  This claim holds slightly more water because a version of Minecraft was released on Nintendo’s Wii U which included skins based on the Mario world.  There still is no “Mario Dimension” within the game and no portal that can be built to access one.

Additionally there are videos claiming to show how to bring characters like Pennywise the Clown, the Hulk, Robin from Teen Titans Go!, and Freddy Fazbear.  I personally do not play Minecraft, but the way that these YouTubers are deceiving children for their personal, financial gain really bothers me.  While I still wouldn’t watch them, I feel like it would be much more respectable if these creators instead made entertainment based on these properties that children like as opposed to deceiving them.

LifeAid

I was on Instagram yesterday and got an ad for something incredible LifeAid, a line of beverages that are all meant to be drunk at different times.  Before going any further, I feel that it’s important to make clear that I have tried none of these beverages, but regardless, I feel like there is a lot that I have to say about them.  LifeAid itself comes in a Lemon Spice flavor and is meant to be drunk at anytime of day.  Something that I find interesting about it is that one of the “key supplements” included in LifeAid is cayenne which I personally never would have thought would belong in a beverage other than a Bloody Mary perhaps.

Another beverage offered by the LifeAid brand is FitAid which comes in a non-specific “citrus” flavor.  It takes a clear step further in terms of extreme-ness compared to its original counterpart LifeAid.  The most extreme, recommended use of LifeAid is when doing yoga or shopping.  FitAid, however, is reccomended to be used when at the gym, hiking, biking, or running.  Like LifeAid, FitAid also includes a surprising spice in turmeric.

FitAid also has its own spin-off product known as FitAid Fuel which comes in a little pouch.  They are meant to be consumed either before or after working out.  From pictures on the website, they seem to come in two flavors, tart-apple banana and tangy-apple sweet potato.  I could see either of those tasting alright, but I think tangy-apple sweet potato would likely be the better of the two because the fall flavors would work well together.

The next beverage is FocusAid.  This is the first beverage under the LifeAid brand which was recommended to me.  This beverage is considerably less extreme than FitAid, but honestly, can any beverage compete with the extreme extremity of FitAid, the absolute most extreme drink in existence?  This beverage is one that I’d guess would be much more suited for my own lifestyle seeing as I live a very unextreme life and that one of the suggested uses of the beverage is when gaming which I do pretty often.  The other suggested uses are for at work and school which leaves this sounding like one of the nerdier drinks made by LifeAid.  The flavor of FocusAid is listed as “Fusion Tea” which could be really good or absolutely terrible.  Fusion Tea is a really nonspecific name, and it’s never said what exactly the tea is “fused” with.

Following the totally lame FocusAid for losers is the totally radical PartyAid for major Chads*.  PartyAid helps you to party hardcore nonstop.  Oh yeah!  It’s intended use is, of course, before, during, AND after you party.  It comes in an awesome berry flavor, and one of the key supplements is milk thistle which I completely genuinely think sounds really cool.   (I’m not sure what it is, but it definitely sounds really cool.)  Unfortunately, I do not party all that often, so I don’t see this particular beverage of being especially of use to me.  Either way, I’d really like to try it alongside all of the other ones.

The penultimate beverage from LifeAid is none other than TravelAid.  Assumably needless to say, TravelAid is recommended to be used when one travels.  Specifically, the drink’s function seems to be to defend against diseases that one might encounter on transport systems such as buses, planes, and trains.  The flavor of this beverage is “Ginger Ale” which I imagine would be alright.  (I have no strong opinions on ginger ale; it’s acceptable and little else.)  Like LifeAid, TravelAid also contains turmeric, but this surprises me less seeing as it is ginger ale flavored.  On second thought, turmeric in lemon spice makes just as much sense.  I’m less interested by this one than most of the others, honestly.  Nothing much really strikes me about it.  This, however, is very different compared to the final LifeAid beverage.

This final beverage is the one that I am most interested in and the reason that I chose to write a blog about these at all.  That drink is GolferAid.  I personally find it absolutely hilarious that there would exist a drink specifically for golfing of all things.  I’m not sure why I find it so funny, but I undeniably do.  GolferAid comes in a “Tropical” flavor.  I’m not sure why the makers of GolferAid thought that “Tropical” was the best flavor for golfers, but as one who does not golf, I suppose I have not much room to speak.  For whatever reason, this drink also contains turmeric which, while I can understand it being included in “Lemon Spice” and “Ginger Ale”, I see no place for it in a flavor like “Tropical”.  I am still very eager to try GolferAid simply because the concept entertains me.

I am honestly excited to try all of these, and will likely be ordering the sample pack sometime soon.  If I do, I’ll probably turn this into a series with a review of each individual drink.  Comment and tell me if you think I should do that or stick to my usual, random, bloggy stuff.

*see the second definition listed https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Chad