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What the f**k is BTS anyway?

That’s the question I set out to investigate about two weeks ago. It’s been a wild ride, let me tell you…

Full disclosure: I cuss a lot sometimes. I am not young…more middle aged, and my favorite band is Tool. Doesn’t seem like an ideal combination for the BTS bandwagon, but there you go.

I am, and have been for several years, aware of a phenomenon called BTS ARMY. I didn’t know until recently that it’s an army of fans of the musical group known as BTS. What I did know is that they are fierce, smart, and they can organize like it’s going out of style. They were truly impressive when all the BLM stuff was happening. (It’s still happening, it’s just not on the news anymore.) They put in their two cents regarding Me too (also still happening), and they got several assholes kicked off twitter at the very least. I have the utmost respect for the ARMY. You guys rock.

I have lots of questions, so I’m going to do this blog for as many days as I can think of questions.

The first order of business is What is it anyway?

I kept hearing BTS and Butter. It was in all the papers. It comes up on google searches where they show you news. I asked my daughter, who is much cooler than I am, “What’s BTS?” She said, “It’s a KPop band.” That didn’t really help because I don’t even know what KPop is. Eventually she told me they are a boy band from Korea. Ok, I can work with that. I have lots of experience with Boy bands because I raised two daughters. Boy bands can be entertaining, although the only one I really cared for was 1D. Backstreet Boys were ok, didn’t like NSync or the other ones. Anyway, I decide to open you tube and find out what BTS is.

I typed in Butter BTS and here’s what I got.

Ok, cool. Korean boy band. They’re cute, they’re boys, they sing and dance, hell they even rap. Nice. And that woulda been it except there were about a billion recommended videos and I just happened to click on this one:

HOLY CRAP!!!!

Ok this changes everything.

I was confused, I have to admit. Mic Drop is amazing. I don’t even like Rap and I thought it was amazing. They dance cool, they combine the rap and singing parts really well and they have great attitude. So that got me wondering, why did they change it? I mean, is pop really all that much more sellable? Apparently, but the answer was even weirder.

Like, I haven’t really gone all the way back to their very beginning so I can’t say anything with certainty. But it seems like they’ve been doing rap, and melodious and whatever else they feel like doing… the whole time. That doesn’t happen very often.

As a Tool fan, I must confess that my very favorite thing about them is they are sarcastic assholes. I mean that in the nicest possible way. They make me laugh. They are also excellent musicians, and Maynard can really sing. But mostly I like them cause they make me think.

Ok, so watch this with lyrics attached…

The words aren’t quite synched with the video but it’s pretty close and you get the idea. I laughed and laughed. Good one guys.

So I spent several days in the youtube rabbit hole watching BTS and then I sheepishly told my daughter, “uh, can I show you something?”

I proceeded to fill her in with all my research and my conclusion that BTS is in fact Korean but they are definitely not a boy band. They are amazing.

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Song of the Day

So I was talking to my best friend about having a full brain. It’s sort of my brand of crazy. There’s so much in there that things just spill out, more specifically, songs. Every day I have some weird song stuck in my head and I don’t know why my brain picks these songs.

We talked about it a bit and it turns out she has the same problem. We both said at the same time that we should try and keep track of these things. Maybe my brain is trying to tell me something.

Yesterday the song was “High Hopes”. Specifically the song from the 50’s, not the more recent one. I didn’t even realize there was a more recent one until I was talking to my daughter and she told me. It’s by Panic! at the Disco. She even sang a bit for me and I was like ohhhh yeah. That ones better. I got the one that I remember from Laverne & Shirley.

Until today. Today’s song was Panic! at the Disco’s song. They’re totally different, it’s not a cover. This song is better but it’s not very original for my brain to pick that one. I still don’t understand why I get these random songs. I don’t even like a lot of them. Sometimes they’re just jingles from commercials. Anyway, I’m going to try to keep track of the song of the day here.

Brains are weird.

It’s all crazy!!

Life in these United States has gotten nuts lately. When he betrayed Korea in favor of North Korea I totally freaked out. I know…took me long enough. Ultimately, I think it’s all gonna work out ok, and I haven’t known what I, personally, could do. So I’m gonna try this and see how it goes.

When stuff is crazy and I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t want someone screaming at me. Sensationalism, though attention grabbing, doesn’t work for me. I need reasonable. So this is where I turn

https://www.youtube.com/live/Vo18MtjJ4LU?is=EzorG5v_JONbXcZx

Hope it works for you as well as it does for me. I’m gonna fight my adhd and try to post these regularly.

2am blues

I have always had that phrase in my head, ‘It’s 2 o’clock in the morning and no one cares.’ I don’t see it as depressive these days, but it can get kind of lonely.

I get backwards on a fairly regular basis. It’s annoying. I will get on a good sleep schedule, like 10pm to 6am, or something similar, and something always happens. Something keeps me up one night and then I sleep later and before I know it I’m sleeping from 10am to 6pm. I hate it.

I just don’t know what to do with myself during these times. I should be writing, but the more I think I should the harder it gets to just do it. It’s like I’m waiting for something. Some piece of it to take me and just sweep me off. It happens sometimes, but not very often. It’s wonderful and magical when an idea or just a thought or something you see can grab you by the creative hand and pull you along. I live for those times.

Most times are like this though. Where I struggle to remember what it is I thought I was about calling myself a writer. My pain management therapist told me to write everyday. Just for 5 minutes. No problem, I thought. I can handle 5 minutes. I even have a stopwatch on my phone. I’ve got this.

Except she said to do it with a pad of paper and a pen. That puts a whole new dimension to the task doesn’t it? I can do it, I’ve done it several times. But it doesn’t stick in my head. Even though she gave me a trigger. As soon as you get up, whatever time, have your drink of water and sit down and write for 5 minutes. My ADD brain skips the step and I forget the whole thing. I had a soda today when I woke up, there’s no trigger to that.

My groove got warped today because the little one is sick and she is sleeping on the couch. The couch which is my domain at night. Her mom apologized. No apology needed. I can take the computer to my room and stare at it just as easily as I can from the couch. But because it messed up my whole flow, I had to think more. I got everything all set up and was ready to start staring when I realized I forgot the mouse. I’ve turned off the mousepad on this laptop because it bothers me to no end when my hand glides over it and moves my cursor to random places. So that meant I had to get up and go back into the living room to get the mouse. Then, since I can’t do anything in a normal way, I detoured to the garage to smoke (ick) and mess about on my phone for awhile. I remembered the mouse, but forgot the notebook and pen.

So, here I am, writing to all the imaginary people on the internet instead. I still don’t know what to do with myself in the middle of the night when I’m the only one awake…

Song of the Day 9.29

Today’s song is by one of my favorites, although what does it say about how I’m feeling?

I actually love this song, and the band. It’s ‘Weak and Powerless’, by A Perfect Circle (in case that doesn’t show up in the you tube box there).

I wanted to hear ‘Schism’ by Tool, but I guess this will do. My experiment to see if I could think of a song and have it play in my head seems like it doesn’t work. The experiment worked, just the results were not what I had hoped for. Although if I can make my internal DJ play what I want it’s not really the same, is it? I can actually get him to play things I want to hear but it doesn’t last, and the song he chose always comes back. There have been times where I’ve heard the same song for days, but that doesn’t happen very often.

This whole blog thing is actually an experiment. I created this page over a year ago so I could vent about how characters kind of try to take over the story and do stuff you don’t want or anticipate. I was very excited. I even paid extra to get someone to zoom with for instructions on how to work this site. Then I didn’t do anything. I mean, for a long time. I still wrote and still got mad at characters but I didn’t vent. I’m trying to work up to it.

Does that happen to all writers? Do all of us struggle with unruly characters and get lost staring at a blank screen trying to remember that perfect thought we had 10 minutes ago when we were in the car? I tend to write in my head a lot, there’s great dialog in there and some pretty intense scenes. Then I get to the computer and stare at it. They never say what they said before either. I struggle to remember that perfect turn of a phrase they used, or how to describe the look on their faces. I turn to my daughter a lot and say how do I describe ___ and make a face at her. Sometimes the faces I get back from her are priceless and I think, oh yeah, one of these characters is gonna use that….if I can figure out how to write it down.

So I decided to do this instead because somehow it’s less personal. I am not used to putting myself out there and this seemed like an easy baby step. I think a lot of people have music in their head, so it’s relatable. Or at least, maybe it’s entertaining. Maybe the musical choices of my inner DJ say something about me, but I’m not sure. He seems to have crap taste in music a lot of the time, but not today.

Song of the day 9.28

Yesterday’s post was dated wrong….oops.

Todays song is annoying as hell. It’s called ‘Old Town Road’, by Billy Ray Cyrus and Little Nas X. I probably spelled one of them wrong 🤷🏻‍♀️

It’s my own damn fault and that’s what makes it so aggravating. I asked my daughter if Little Nas X was any good. I had never heard anything by him but I see him all the time. The dude is everywhere. So she was kind enough to pull up the song on YouTube for me. I won’t punish you all that way.

It’s actually hard to tell what kind of a rapper he is. And I’m not a big fan of rap but there has been the occasional tune that was entertaining. I do know that I absolutely do NOT care for Billy Ray Cyrus so that wasn’t a shocker.

Just imagine, if there had been no fluke achey breaky heart there would be no Miley. What a lovely thought.