10 Years' Come And Gone

9/9/99

Was it really 10 fucking years ago today?

wow... so much shit happened that day that affects my life even to this day... all be it all mostly indirectly.

Probably biggest is this is the 10 year mark of when I started high school. I have ranted about high school a bit in here, and while the negatives still stand, I have noticed more than a few positives. Most of it really has nothing to do with high school at all, but more or less events that happened within those "lauded" 4 years. My first kiss, my first love, my best friend, the summer of 2001, the birth of my creative spark, my first film... all of these things happened while I was in high school. While I still detest the institution of high school and many of the people I went there with, I can't look back at those 4 years in complete disgust. Some of the best and happiest moments of my life came around in that time, and the fact that it all began 10 years ago now makes me look back in disbelief that this much time has passed already.

The next is an event I talked about in an entry almost exactly 2 years ago: when the MTV Music Video Music Awards gave its Video of the Year award to Lauren Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)" over Korn's "Freak on a Leash", which was also the heavy favorite to win. At the time, it felt like such an injustice that I literally slammed my TV into a wall. I talked about this heavily before as I said, but this, coupled with the recent creation of Fixer, was what started me to think about how I would make music videos. This, for all intents and purposes, was one of the events that lead me to where I am now.

The other is an event that affects another big part of me, the gamer. One of my fave systems of all time was released, the Dreamcast. That was a huge moment for gaming, as many of you can tell by going to just about any videogame website today, as most are filled with Dreamcast retrospectives. The system was the birth of the modern gaming era, and as much as its in vogue to say the 8-bit and 16-bit eras were the best, I am glad to be living in the modern era of gaming. Granted, gaming was in the shits from 2005 - mid-2007, but damn did it strike back with a-fucking-vengeance in mid-2007! It hasn't let down yet either, 2 years later! Anyway, Dreamcast also has the nefarious distinction of being the last hurrah for Sonic... before he became a fetish. Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 we're some of the best Sonic games ever made, and unfortunately the last time he was taken seriously. After that, the fur fags and shitty fanfic writers got ahold of him, making him more popular than ever... and turning him into a sweaty obese 14-year-old's fangasm of vaginal juices and fuzz.

Last is something that may be slightly over-looked. But... according to the band, D'espairsRay formed today, 10 years ago. D-Ray is a band, that like oh so many these days, I have a love/hate relationship with, starting off as innovative metal heads, then recently morphing into run-of-the-mill uninspired pop-rock. However, I do give alot of credit to D-ray for shaping the modern wave of VK. They took it from being more of an arena rock phenomena to a more seedy, dark, underground, and for the most part, metal experience. This more disturbing, almost cultish take on VK was what really drew me into the genre. 5 years ago, D-Ray's influence seem so great on the indies VK scene that it really felt for a while, that many young VK bands were really trying to be like D-Ray, borrowing heavily from their look and sound. While I do not really agree with what they are doing now, their influence on the current generation of VK cannot be denied. How the fuck is the band 10 years old already!?

Its been a long 10 years... that went by in an instant, and it all began on 9/9/99... a day that had infinite influence on the next 10 years to come.

-Roger