Happy Birthday to me!

Today's my birthday and as such I feel like I should take a moment to reflect.  I don't feel older and I don't think I've come to realize my own mortality anymore then I did yesterday, but I do think that a birthday is an opportune time to reflect on personal goals.

Actually...I don't think goals is the word I'm looking for.  I think aspirations is a better word.

I know, I know...its a matter of semantics, but as is with many things, the details are what matter the most.

For the last seven years I've aspired to be a good husband and in that I think I've been successful.  I suppose only God and the Translator could tell for sure.  There is no doubt within me that I would be where and who I am today without the support of my wife.  She's meant more to me then anything in my life.

Once someone told me that life was a bitch, but with 29 years behind me, more often then not life is...I don't know what life is but, it's not always a bitch.  Sometimes its down right rewarding and sometimes even fun.

I stand at the end of a 29 year trail and at the start of another that will lead me to inevitable pain and turmoil but, with those trials will come victories and joy.  I look forward to being a father one day.  I look forward to reading the Translator's newest best seller.  I look forward to many happy years of fulfillment and I even look forward to the trials because, without trials how can I become a better person. 

I'm not a music snob...I just don't like songs that suck!

The other day the Translator and I were watching some videos on Hulu.  She's recently become quite engrossed with a segment on Current TV called "Sergio's White Hot Top 5", which basically consists of a comic, Sergio, mocking popular music.

Over the course of the evening the realization that the definition of Alternative music has changed drastically since I was a child and was listening to Alternative greats like Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Stone Temple Pilots.  Apparently I got off the train so long ago that my ticket doesn't even mean the same thing anymore.

If I were to get on the music train in Pop-town heading to Alternative-ville there are several things that become evident to me:

1. The ride got a whole lot shorter -- Since when was it completely plausible to mis-categorize an alternative song as a pop song.  From the start the alternative genre has been exactly what is sounds like...a FUCKING ALTERNATIVE TO POP.
2. The landscape has completely changed -- Instead of seeing songs about how the life sucks and how we hate everyone, we get touchy feely bullshit.  Now I'll be honest...I like REM as much as the next guy, probably more, but I blame the transformation of a once awesome independent genre of music into an amalgam of foppish young men crying about their girlfriends on you Micheal Stipe.  DAMN YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL.

Fortunately, the music that was called alternative is still out there, apparently its now called metal.

Well to the gods of music I say...Thanks for preserving my childhood music, even if you had to relabel it...also, FUCK YOU MICHEAL STIPE.  Just wanted to put that in there for good measure.

Let me know what you think of America's choices in music today...Do you think Timbawood is buttilicious or do you want a little more moshing and a little less hugging and crying?