Radio Edit

I was listening to the radio the other day and Rihanna's "S&M" and was flabbergasted by the way they edited the song for the radio. It's not the first time I've noticed the bizarre editing that the radio subjects songs to, but there were a couple incidents I heard in a row that boggled my mind and made me feel the need to talk about it. Clearly "S&M" has some sexual content, the name implies as much, but the words they choose to silence have no sexual meaning, unless you already understand the concept. Here's the verse I'm referring to.

Sticks and stones may break my bones

But chains and whips excite me

On the radio 'whips' and 'chains' were bleeped out. They also bleeped out sex earlier in the chorus. I don't know what's so bad about the word sex that it can't be in a song, but the part of about whips and chains only means something to people who understand they are a facet of sadomasochism. Which of course the title of the song is a reference to, but that's another fact people who society views as too young to hear that kind of talk aren't going to know what she's referring to anyway.

I also watched the music video for Foster the People "Pumped up Kicks" on VH1 and they bleeped out 'gun' and 'bullet' for some reason. I know I can watch tv and see people use guns and bullets to kill people, but for some reason it is incorrect for people to say the words in a song. I'm sure everybody has examples of stuff like this. I remember other ones like 'knife' from a Limp Bizkit song. The one I remember the most is from Kid Rock's "Cowboy"

I'm a paint his town red, and paint his wife white, uhh

Where they bleeped out 'white' and I had no clue what the bleeped out word was for quite some time. Of course the reason I didn't know what word was missing was because I didn't have the conception of what the singer could mean at that point in time. I can handle the desire to bleep curse words, but just because a normal word is used in a provocative way doesn't mean that it needs to be bleeped out.

Blogging, because I need to write

Too often I think of writing as a job instead of a hobby and let video games take the place because it's a lot easier to do and since I have a Dazzle I can record my gameplay and do stuff with that online to publish videos that I commentate over which is productive like writing, but the writing takes more effort. I can record a commentary delete it and try over again and it will take about twenty minutes, but writing a story requires much more than that, and that just involves finishing the first draft. After that I have to revise what I've written until it's good enough for other people to read.

And even then writing the story isn't done. Once other people have read it they are going to find problems that don't occur to me. After that happens I correct those errors and probably have to do a decent amount of rewriting depending on how early in the story my plot error occurred. And it feels like a lot of work compared to other hobbies I have.

Even consider all that there is nothing that feels quite as good as writing a story. You create these characters, give them a world to exist in, and problems to solve. Exploring all those facets of the story are amazing when you can get it done right. And this is how I'm starting this blog which will force me to write words and get in the habit of writing something to make me work on the many short stories I've started and become too lazy to finish.