Weird. Weridweirdweirdweird WEIRD

Good. Now that I have your attention and the word "weird" now sounds extremely strange to you, let's talk, shall we?

I'm talking about the concept of pop singers trying to be, well, weird. There have always been the bands who have been deemed "strange" and "unconventional", but I'm talking about super mainstream singers. Okay, I'll be specific. Here's looking at Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Nicki Minaj. I don't know if I'm about to start a war here, but I'm going to say that of these three, Lady Gaga started the whole "Look at me, I'm freaky and you'll never know what I'll wear next!" in these recent years. And sure, you know, whatever gets you noticed, and whatever you decide is fine. But what's bothering me is that Katy Perry didn't used to be this strange. She didn't used to wear outrageous outfits and coloured wigs. She only appears to have been doing this recently, and I really interpret that as "Oh God, Lady Gaga's really popular and she's weird, I need to step it up!"

Same goes for Nicki Minaj. I mean, have you seen her? If we're going by degrees here, there's Lady Gaga, then a super girly version of her that Katy Perry embodies, and then Nicki Minaj is like Katy Perry to the fifth power! And have you seen these three at award shows? It's like they've been spying on each other and then they all try to outdo one another. Lady Gaga, not so much as far as I've noticed. But Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj? Crickey! Frankly, it's exhausting because eventually, somebody's going to run out of ideas. And why can't they just be odd in their own right instead of just looking like different facets of each other?

Look at Florence Welch. It's not like she's trying really really hard to be different, she just is. And that's probably what makes her very likeable, because she is different in her own way without forcing you to notice it. So I say, "I salute you Miss Welch, for proving that you don't need to be exaggeratedly weird to command attention." You know what it probably is? Nicki, Katy, and Lady Gaga all have such very generic music that they have to make up for it some how, so they go all out on stage presence instead of improving the quality of their music.

Church, State, and Gay Marriage

Yes, we're talking about this again, and but this is a serious issue. It now concerns the Church of England. The British government wants to be able to allow gay marriage by 2015, but the Church is putting the breaks on this idea. They say that it will alter the very meaning of marriage. Again with the "meaning of marriage" argument. It doesn't matter. If two people love each other, they deserve the right to get married. England already recognizes civil partnerships and gives gay couples the same legal rights as a married couple, but they're not allowed to call them "marriages". The Church has said that to perform a same-sex marriage would be to undermine its role as the state church. You know what's funny? I always thought the Church of England was a more progressive church. They're so worried about "violating" the sanctity of marriage, but they seem to forget that they became a church in the first place because Henry VIII wanted to divorce his first wife. Wasn't divorce in the 1500s a huge middle finger to the sanctity of marriage? I honestly am surprised that gay marriage is such a huge issue, especially when many of England's most famous people are/were gay (Oscar Wilde, [potentially] Shakespeare, Mark Gatiss, Stephen Fry, Phyllida Lloyd [director of "Mamma Mia!"]). I should have thought that homosexuality would ot be such a huge issue there, but apparently, I was, to my despair, wrong. Full story here.

The Press

The relationship between the Press and various celebrities and other influential people seems to have never been very good. Sensationalism is often the biggest seller, and of course, the press will be the first to offer it. Nobody can be perfect, even the most perfect-seeming people, and many feed off their flaws to make themselves feel better. Whether it's Lady Diana (who, fleeing from the paprazzi, got in a car crash and died), or even as far back as Oscar Wilde, the hounding of the Press is astounding. Recently, it came out that News of the World hacked the phones of many victims and deleted information from them, and there is currently a lawsuit going on between Gordon Brown and The Sun. The Sun released the fact the Brown's son has cystic fibrosis, and they claimed that the Browns had given them permission to run the story, when they had done no such thing. It just goes to show that the magazines will invade anyone's privacy, and often print bald-faced lies (how many times is Jennifer Aniston declared pregnant a year?) just to get a story to entertain the credible masses.

The Sudden Attraction of Intellect

People say that others dumb themselves down to seem attractive, but recently there has been a resurgence in the media in the appeal of intellect. In the words of Irene Adler in the BBC series Sherlock: "Brainy is the new sexy." Across the media, there are characters that are extremely intelligent and women are very much attracted to that. But for some reason, boys our age seem to take pride in seeming stupid. I overheard some boys in the hall discussing marks, and one announced that he had and overall mark of 36% to which his friends gave a loud and appreciative "Niiiiice!" Why is it that teenaged boys hide their intellect for fear of being called a nerd, when really that's what's appealing to most women? It could possibly stem from most cartoons and TV shows that depict the intelligent boy as being bullied and ugly and "nerdy" while the good-looking jock is popular and gets all the girls. Yet, most television shows feature an extremely intelligent character who, while still picked on for his intellect, is still the object of most viewers' fancy because he is, in fact, extremely handsome. Perhaps these characters have been introduced to counteract the stereotype of the ugly, intelligent boy.