October 2004 - Atmosphere (photo album)

I'm pretty certain October was the month my Mum went on a holiday to Bali with her friends and I stayed over at my Nan and Grandad's house for four nights. It's pretty memorable for me as I can distinctively remember me not wanting my Mum to go there due to the bombing attack which occurred just two years earlier. I was really worried about her going. However, when she came back, she brought home this huge pile of 20-30 pirated PS2 games, so it was a good result in the end.  

were they on those burn discs

I'm really not interested in having this argument again, but I do agree that it was (mostly) dead by summer 2003. I think from the fashion shown in the photos, such as the guy flipping the bird and the girl in the photo just below that, October 2004 actually looks like a midway point between that early '00s new millennium thing and the core '00s. I'll just leave it at that.

My fav super hero movie of all time Spider-man 2 came out that year, A Marvel movie has yet to top it for me!

I still have the Spiderman 2 themed garbage can that I bought back then in my room

Quite the opposite, I think 2005 onward was much better because I think the Katrina response - or lack thereof - knocked some sense into the collective heads of the voters. It was a more positive time to be around because, despite the pain of unending war and that looming recession, there was far less of that using patriotism as a cudgel to beat against anyone questioning the course. I guess what I'm trying to say is what made the earlier part of the '00s negative is that mass hysteria/hypnotism that had people continuing to support decisions that were going to bite them in the ass in a major way.

I mean, yeah, I do like the culture of most of the '00s, up to and including 2000 to 2004; I grew up with the '00-'04 era, that's my "golden age" era, having been ages 10 to 14 during that time (you know what they say about the pop culture you experience when you're 12, etc. etc.). But I feel much more at home after 2005 or so. It feels less dark to me, most likely because it seemed like people were prepared to take the country and the world in a better direction.

And just as an aside, criminalizing homosexuality was more than just "stupid." Imagine being a gay person living in one of those states in 2003 or earlier; you are risking imprisonment for just existing. And worst of all, you could be arrested for engaging in homosexual acts in just the privacy of your own home; you couldn't even be privately gay, because if someone found out what you do just in the privacy of your own home, your freedom was in danger. That's goddamn dystopian.