Photoblag One

I'm not the only one who sees it, right? (taken way back at Christmas)

Apparently Wal★Mart has the same opinion of Guitar Hero 4 & 5 as I do. (Taken a few weeks ago)
I'm still not sure I drove my own car home. (Taken the day before the previous photo I think)

Hopefully the next one of these will be longer. I have something planned, so it'll either be awesome or the worst thing ever, according to the laws of the Internet.

Also while I probably don't have your attention, here's my twitter, which is just about to wrap up a truly anticlimactic month-long series. I'm very...proud is the wrong word. Relieved? Distracted? Waffles? I'm very waffles of my achievement

Let's Play Count the Clichés! (Again)

Bon Jovi, "It's My Life"

This ain't a song [1] for the brokenhearted
No silent prayer for the faith departed [doesn't really count, but I hate when songs cheat at grammar like this. Unless you're Shakespeare, it always sounds forced]
And I ain't gonna be just a face in the crowd [2, plus a third just for "face in the crowd", and a warning for "I ain't gonna be"]
You're gonna hear my voice [4] when I shout it out loud [5]

It's my life [6]
It's now or never [7]
I ain't gonna live forever [8, plus another warning for rhyming "never" with "forever"]
I just wanna live [9] while I'm alive [warning #3]
(It's my life) [10*]

My heart is like [11] an open highway
Like Frankie said, "I did it my way" [12**]
I just wanna live [9b] while I'm alive [warning 3.5]
'Cause it's my life [10c]

This is for the ones who [13, or possibly 1d] stood their ground [14]
For Tommy and Gina who never backed down [15; 4th warning for putting these two right next to each other]
Tomorrow's getting harder, [15, though I'm pretty sure it's "tomorrow's getting hotter," which is about equally bad] make no mistake
Luck ain't even lucky, gotta make your own breaks

[repeat chorus]

You better [16] stand tall [17]
When they're calling you out [18]
Don't bend, don't break [19--when was the last time you heard "bend" without "break"]
Baby [20-- the imperative "Baby"], don't back down [15d]

[repeat chorus twice]

Total Score: 20 distinct clichés, plus 4 repeats (or possibly 19/5), adding up to two less than our last entrant. However that song had 23 qualifying lines, while this one has 21 (or 19 if you omit the two repeats in the chorus). Add in the 4½ warnings, and the final score on the Clichometer is a near-perfect 95|114|135.

This is actually lower than I expected; most likely I was overestimating it because of the all-cliché chorus, which just feels like you're being assaulted with them. And note that many of the non-cliché lines (especially the second and the first half of the last), don't actually make sense (how can a song be a "silent prayer"?); for that matter, the first two lines are complete filler, state what kind o song this is not, but having no real relation to what the song is. Other special notice goes to use of "ain't" and "gonna" as cheats to skip syllables, and, conversely, "just," "like," and "when" as filler words. Note the fact that nearly every line is (part of) a complete sentence, and that the chorus is twice as long as the verses, both tropes endemic to pop and pop-adjacent styles (i.e. pop-rock, pop-country), which tend to lead to lyric that are stilted and repetitive, respectively.

That took longer than I expected. I;m really out of practice with this actual writing stuff.

*The cliché in question is reusing the first line of the chorus as the last line of the chorus.
**I'm letting "I did it my way" off, but glib quotes of older songs, literature, and poems are one of the worst of all the clichés. Bon Jovi does this on a lot, the worst of which is this. For your own sake, don't click on that link

[untitled]

There are 30 more of these.