What Is Techno Again?

Pay no attention to the girl behind the curtain.

Okay, I’ll demystify the enigma a little for you. My name is Stephanie and I live in Pennsylvania. I’m eighteen and a student who’s majoring in English literature. So far, the only thing I know is that I’m destined to write. Something.

I like to read, write, listen to music, watch and analyze movies, and indulge my rather geekish tendencies (for the record, I prefer Star Wars to Star Trek). In fact, one of my dream jobs would be being somehow involved in the film industry. I am a gamer. I embrace my inner grammar stickler. I love Harry Potter. I buy dvds just for the special features. I’m a sucker for the nineties. I don’t know why. I am a coffee fiend. Although I’ve never been a big Superman fan, I sort of “collect” songs about him. If someone made me a mixed cd chock full of nothing but Superman songs, I would probably consider that the coolest thing ever. I have this weird pet peeve about cashiers not putting the receipt in the bag. I used to love Tom Cruise; now I think he’s an ass. I’m into Final Fantasy. I have a cat named Buffy, after the Vampire Slayer. I admit, ninjas could so beat pirates, but I’m officially undecided on which I like better. My favorite flavor of ice cream is a tie between mint chocolate chip and black raspberry. I’ve seen every episode of X-men the Animated Series, the nineties cartoon. I just love old cartoons—they don’t make them how they used to. I’m a very nostalgic and sarcastic person. I am a nerd fighter (google Brotherhood 2.0 if you’re curious). Oh, and I’m a comic book nerd (I love Batman and the X-men, especially Wolverine). And yes, although I am a bit of a nerd, TV is good, and I tend to watch a little too much of it. In fact, that’s part of the point of this little blog. To rant, kind of like an editorial. Well, here’s hoping, anyway.

Email: whatistechnoagain@gmail.com

AIM: heartofsmoke

Bands: Nine Inch Nails, Garbage, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fiona Apple, Alice in Chains, the Cure, Depeche Mode, Nightwish, Muse, Nirvana, Stereophonics, Dead Can Dance, R.E.M., Queens of the Stone Age, Hole/Courtney Love, Death Cab for Cutie/The Postal Service, the Flaming Lips, Dido, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Louis XIV, Oasis

Books: The Hobbit, the Earthsea cycle, Fahrenheit 451, The Bell Jar, The Crucible, the Harry Potter series, Dragon’s Gold, Serpent’s Silver, Chimaera’s Copper, The Lord of the Flies, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Dracula

Films: The Prestige, V for Vendetta, The Fountain, Donnie Darko, Cast Away, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, Little Miss Sunshine, Lost in Translation, Fight Club, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars (original trilogy), Lost Souls, Requiem for a Dream; Girl, Interrupted; American History X, Indiana Jones trilogy, Napoleon Dynamite, Juno, No Country for Old Men, The Machinist, 3:10 to Yuma, Hard Candy, Batman Begins, American Beauty, Rescue Dawn

TV: 24, Prison Break, House, Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, South Park, The Simpsons, Futurama, X-men the Animated Series (TAS), Smallville, Firefly, Chuck, Batman TAS

Actors: Jake Gyllenhaal, Hugh Laurie, Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Winona Ryder, Brad Pitt, William Fichtner, Kiefer Sutherland, Hugh Jackman, Steve Carell, Ellen Page, Scarlett Johansson, Edward Norton, Adam Baldwin, Christian Bale, Ewan McGregor, Harrison Ford, Heath Ledger (R.I.P.)

What You Might Be Wondering …

About My Icon: My icon is of Anakin Skywalker from the webcomic I <3th Darth, which sadly is a project that has ceased.

About My Blog Name: So what’s up with the name What Is Techno Again? One day, around when I started creating this blog, I was listening to a techno song on my favorite playlist while talking to my roommate. I said how much I loved that song and how great (some, mind you) techno can be. And I got that achingly predictable reaction: Uh, what is techno, anyway? Really long songs that are amazingly fun to dance to and are full of repetition, remixing, fading out, and just general awesomeness. They can be sensual, lustrous, primal, and in many unfortunate cases, just plain cheesy and irritating. Dictionaries define it something like this: a style of disco music characterized by very fast synthesizer rhythms, heavy use of samples, and a lack of melody; any of various styles of dance music characterized by electronic sounds and a high-energy, rhythmic beat; a style of fast heavy electronic dance music usually without vocals. Personally, I think dictionaries are stiffs and hate techno.

Me? I think it’s hilariously delightful. The fact that the music genre itself is so wildly unorthodox, capricious, and incalculable makes it some sort of blissful anomaly. And I started to think, Hey, you know, techno somehow seems to fit—maybe not exactly me or my life, but what I want my writing (and in those more unsuccessful cases, how I’m sure it’ll sometimes turn out) to be. I don’t want it to be ordinary. So in a way that’s my goal: I want my writing to be techno. Erm, figuratively speaking, I mean. Some techno is honestly really bad.

About the Blog: Why do I blog? I love writing. I’m not exactly sure where this little blog is going to end up—right now, it’s about comic book movie news, tv/film/book reviews, and anything else I find interesting. I love tweaking with images on Paint Shop Pro, html, and designs. I’ve been thinking about making this blog a little more personal by including some writing pieces and other random things in my life. I dunno, I’m still working on it.

Your Named Your Cat After Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Yup. She’s my baby. It’s sort of ironic, though, because she’s not fast like Buffy (she’s fat, haha) and she gets scared at everything! Simply put, she wouldn’t make a very good slayer.

Emailing: Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Have a book/movie/episode (from my TV list) you’d like reviewed? Have an idea in mind of something you’d like to see on my blog? I’d be more than happy to hear from you and get some feedback. Drop me a line at the email listed above. I promise, I’ll read it! :]