Dreamscape in a Blanket Silver-Grey

In every generation, there is a chosen one...wait, that’s the opening sequence of Buffy. What I mean is, everyone, no matter what generation they’re from, has (at least) that one thing that changed their lives. It might be a movie, like The Sound of Music, Star Wars, or Casablanca. It might be a show, like I Love Lucy, Cheers, or--well, Buffy. It might be a comic, or a song, or a particular musical artist. For me, it was a book - or rather, a series of books - that was released 20 years ago today. I’d heard everyone talking about how good Harry Potter was, but I was a little late to the party - the first book was released when I was 8, but it wasn’t until age 11 (roughly the same age as the characters I was reading about) that I finally started the series. At the time, of course, I had no idea the effect it would have on my life, or the dark times ahead that it would help me get through. All I knew was that it was magical, and though I also knew that sort of magic existed only in ...

http://offbeat.topix.com/slideshow/18595 All right. Usually, I wouldn’t bother responding to an article like the one above. The person (or people) who wrote it is/are clearly quite bitter toward my generation, and nothing I say is likely to change that. That’s fine. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and there are actually a few things within this article that I could agree with, but overall, the MASSIVE generalizations it makes are ridiculous. Moreover, some of its points are unnecessarily snotty, completely hypocritical, and/or false, and it got me fired up enough to write about it. Let’s break it down. Before even getting to the content itself, on the right-hand side of the intro page, there is a blurb entitled “About Offbeat” that states (ANDIQUOTE), “Need a smile or a laugh? Offbeat will turn your day around with an uplifting dose of hilarious, heartwarming, awwww, and awesome. We bring you the cutest baby animals, the funniest photos, the most on-point tweets, the...