The Fifth Wall

Words cannot express this 20th century Cup O’ Soup commercial, but a lot of weed can.

[note: I'd like to alleviate some concerns and point out that the Youtube category will be a small portion of the website. I'm using these to test out different  additions, such as embedding video. The real content is coming soon.]

I chose this first video for my Youtube collection for multiple reasons. For starters, I wanted to follow up my long winded introduction (see previous post) with something on the lighter side. Secondly, I wanted to make it clear that the Youtube section was going to be more than me posting videos for other people to laugh at a stranger over the internet.

This video finds a woman taping herself sitting on the toilet (Imagine that) rapping about sitting on the toilet. The lyrics are pretty simple, just “sitting on the toilet” over and over again as the camera sways and the woman bobs her head. The first time I viewed this video, my jaw was appropriately hanging somewhere close to my knees. After several further views, I find myself laughing, perhaps more than a sane person should.

In my usual over analysis, I did have a few questions: First, is this woman actually…using the toilet? The audience is spared any “sound effects” but the situation does beg the question of whether or not she was on the toilet already and grabbed her camera to rap about it afterward, or if she just sat on the toilet with the camera, with full intention on rapping away about using the toilet that she was not, at the time, using. Did she purposely upload this video to Youtube, or did a friend do it without her knowledge?

I did take one thing away from this video, however, and that is the knowledge that I will never be able to sit on a toilet again without this woman looping in my mind. This one line rap will remain stuck inside my head for a long, long time. And thus: The sub-category.

I understand that many people coming here after this is written and this website is up and truly moving again, won’t know who I am or where I’ve come from. That being said, I’m a nostalgic person by trade, I’m going to ask you to afford me a few minutes; sit tight, and read a few paragraphs.

First of all, you’re probably asking: What does The Fifth Wall mean? The answer is as straightforward as it is corny: Most are aware that the three walls represent the walls in a television sitcom: They are the walls that can physically be seen on the stage: The background and the two sides. The fourth wall is the invisible barrier that allows the audience to peer in to the lives of the audience. We can see them, but they can’t see us, and they don’t know that they are being watched. When an element breaks the fourth wall, it is the acknowledgment that they are in a television show, a movie, or a book. A lot of parody does this.

The Fifth Wall, a term that I’ve coined and as a result the only user is myself, deals with the barrier between the speaker and the viewer. It comes from several years of talking politics in multi-user emails, where I left everyone thinking the same thing. And that is what I want the viewers of The Fifth Wall to think: I might not agree with everything he said, but he makes good points and boy can he talk.

Although the rest of the segments on this website will be of a more humorous nature, the true meat and potatoes will be much more serious: politically, religiously, culturally, and economically minded. This isn’t a place to act as a figurehead for any particular party. The Fifth Wall stands for honest, straightforward talk with no spin and no bias.

I’m pretty sure I promised some rambling history at one point or another, so here it goes. This upcoming March (2010) will mark eight years that I have been publishing on the internet, and close to half of my life (I am 20 years old at the time of this writing). I’m not going to go into my writing history at this point (I’ve done it about six times up to this point), but I can easily sum it up in one word: Embarrassing. I imagine it’s human nature to look at your past self (a much less mature self) and want to slug yourself in the jaw, but…wow. More importantly, I’ve gone over my history in every website incarnation up to this point so if you’ve missed it, I’m not doing it a seventh time.

One last thing I would like to point out: This will be my last content update in text. Aside from small annotations, my articles will all be in video/audio formats.

Change is coming…