Can’t remember if I’ve mentioned them before, but at the moment some my most played (favourite) music is by The Shins.

I had them on in the car when Sam was with me one time and she dubbed my music intelligent-indie which I found thoroughly humorous. I suppose if you cared to genre dub it, it would be indie-rock or something. I’m hopeless when it comes to categorizing music.

Anyhoo. I really, really like the Shins. I first heard them on the Garden State sound track, traced my way to New Slang and discovered I liked the rest of it.

For the record, Sam doesn’t like it, Dad doesn’t really like it (despite finding an odd affinity with Sixpence – also my influence), Mum and Laura don’t mind it and Emily and Hannah were instantly won over and now slightly obsessed.

Just today a friend of mine was surprised by the fact that I also like Relient K – how’d they miss that?! I’ve been listening to them for a good few years now, discovered on impulse and a joint buy with Hannah of their Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right, But Three Do CD, by which we were immediately hooked and now own all of theirs collectively. “I thought you were more into accoustic stuff?” Yes, but… sometimes you need a change – to be honest RK is fairly accoustic in it’s own way.

I’m not into music where you cannot understand what’s being said eg. screamo. I’m not a fan at all of hiphop/rap type stuff nor what I call shopping centre music, although I’ve been slighly persauded to not mind a few due to influences of Jess W and her incesent playing of every single genre under the sun. I travel with Jess a lot and so have to put up it. She has not yet and will not ever win me to liking Bollywood.

The accoustic thing does explain a lot of my music, the more mellow stuff. Anything within and moving a bit on from the realms of Simon and Garfunkel is usually a winner.

It becomes very complicated when make a so called stand on one small thing only to find the implications of consistency are far larger than you thought.

This morning I refused the easter eggs that Mum had for me. I had told her only yesterday that I didn’t want any but obviously she didn’t believe me or felt bad about having some for the others. She thankfully understood when I did not take them. My younger sisters however started going on about hypocracy and asked what happens when it comes to Christmas and your Birthday?

If you’ve been reading for a while you might have noticed that certain aspects of consumerism really frustrate me. This has become only more clear while working in retail where I get Mums and Grandmas coming in, “This year we’ve chosen to celebrate Easter by buying books about bunnies and bilbies as they last longer than chocolate”.

It annoys me that people totally miss the point of Easter and treat it as another day of the year where they don’t have to work and have a ripper of excuse to spend up big on frivolitries – like chocolate. Shows how effective we are in getting the truth out there.

Why though, refuse eggs? I truly did not spend enough time thinking about it before I made the choice to ‘not buy into it’. I originally decided to ‘just not’ this year because of the commerical aspect in hope that my recognition of the stupidity and waste and non-symbol aspects of the egg would be in some way acted upon.

“Do you plan to continue this trend of anti-commercialism?”

That’s exactly what it is, commercialism. Yet the nature of the western world throws this commercialism back into our faces as it is replicated in everything, from our food to our clothes to our holidays and most clearly, our celebrations. It is very difficult to completely ignore it, to refuse it, to not go along with it, to defeat the wheat, go against the grain.

I was talking to a friend about this all, he said that, “What I think you’re really dealing with here is a value conflict with mainstream society.”

It calls into question the nature of taking a stand. Why bother?

“By recognising that it’s crap you’ve already won your battle.”
“And what are words without some action?
“But what’s the point of action if it achieves nothing further”
“What about demonstrating your words?”

Why should we bother to take a stand?
“To what extent do you participate in things that are fundamentally meaningless in order to reach people who mean something to God?”

“You don’t achieve anything by making a protest other than to alienate yourself from someone who clearly doesn’t know any better”
“Then why does anyone ever make a stand about anything?”
“You make a stand when it either compromises you… or can benefit someone else and by compromise I mean leading to sin.”

The question now is, in what way is refusing easter eggs, making any difference to anyone beyond supporting my own frustrations at a way the world works? Is it worth it? Will it change anything? Probably not.