I Don't Care

Why I can't trust technology (especially cell phones)

2012-02-04T18:15:00.003-05:00

As of late (the last year or two), I have taken to writing most of my lyrics/thoughts that I come up with on computers or even worse, a note-taking app on my cell phone.

I started doing this for a couple reasons: one, I often think of lyrics "on-the-go" and its just faster to pull out my phone or laptop and type them up quickly than to pull out a notepad and pencil and scribble them down. I type much more quickly than I can write, and my typing is (obviously) much more legible. Often times when I'm thinking quickly, my brain will be going far too fast for my hand and I will "lose" some good lines just because it took me too long to write down what I was thinking. And while I do commit a good amount of my lyrics to memory, its mostly not enough for me to justify trying to memorize what I come up with. Trying to remember lyrics straight away stifles my creative process and ends up with me getting confused later on as I make changes and rewrites.

Two: it's easier to type something up when in the midst of other activities. I, like most people, think I lead a relatively busy (if not productive (?)) life, and it is infinitely more practical when in the era of "conversations" via text-messaging and making "friends" via social-networking sites to digitize my creative thoughts. I am perennially afraid I will misplace my written lyrics. I also find it hard to cross out things I've written to rewrite them - it seems that I might be making excuses now, but to edit a word document, just hit the backspace key and - whoop - those old lyrics that messed up the meter aren't there anymore!

This strategy has backfired on me, though, because of the simple fact that technology, like pen and paper, is not a immutable or invincible medium. To that end, it is probably just as vulnerable as paper in many respects, and less durable in many others! Let's see: vulnerable to:

1. water (check)
2. fire (check)
3. being dropped and broken (check)
4. operator error (check)
5. computer error (check)
6. battery death (check)
7. being lost, either the device itself or the program or the file (check)

Paper, on the other hand, is only vulnerable to #2 or 7. (I would argue that if my lyrics notebook were dropped in water, I could dry it out and still have it be mostly legible).

So now to the point of this hand-wringing. My phone has been acting shitty due to me dropping it (yes it has a case, no this does not help much). I take it to my carrier's store and tell them it's acting up. They reset my phone's hard drive, wiping it clean of all the apps. I was not thinking at the time of all the lyrics that I had written on there - I've had the phone since Julyish and probably add new lyrics on average 2-3x a month - and let them do it. (Of course in the end this did not help my phone get better reception.)

Now it is a few days later, and I realize that a bunch of my lyrics have been deleted, including the full lyrics for two songs that I was developing and just never had time or thought to transfer to paper. In what probably seemed a random outburst to my roommate, I began yelling, "FUCK!!" FUCK!!" repeatedly and punching my bed pillows. (This did not exactly feel good on my right side, as I had a collapsed lung about 10 days ago and am still recovering.)

This is why I cannot trust technology. Technology does not like me as I am pretty rough on it, often. The result is that my amount of "operator error" and "computer error" is relatively high.

What have I learned? I will probably continue to write lyrics on technology to some extent, but will be sure to back it up as much as possible. And think on my feet a little more to remember: DO NOT LET ANYONE RESET YOUR CELL PHONE AS YOU STILL HAVE LYRICS ON THERE THAT ARE NOT BACKED UP. Fortunately I remember most of the lyrics of both songs, and since it was only two full songs with a bunch of other fragments and snippets, I guess it could have been much worse. But still. What's lost is lost, and those songs will never seem as perfect or whole to me again because of this. For this I weep, a loss that is as private as can be.

Complacency... and some lyrics

2012-01-02T19:40:00.002-05:00

Well I just read my last post I made on here. I never ended up playing those solo shows I wanted to, and in fact I've been a bit lazy in my musical endeavors lately. I'm still writing though, and I'm even more optimistic about my chances to start recording/playing in earnest this year.

I was thinking today about how outraged I used to be over the many injustices in the world today, and I fear that I may have become more accommodating and complacent over the last couple years. I fear that I may have taken these injustices for granted, and instead of continuing my outrage at them, denouncing them, and working to overturn them when I can, in the words of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, "I think I've become one of the others". The problem is that it's so difficult to work outside "the system", and many times I know I've taken the path of least resistance. I need to start reading more of the alternative news outlets again (bloggers, foreign news outlets such as Al-Jazeera English and BBC) and gaining outside perspectives on my neat little white American bubble.

This sort of soul-searching that I do often doesn't drastically change my behavior, but it does change the way I think and act in certain situations. I guess these amount to my new years' resolutions. Concretely, I want to play more music that spreads a positive and intellectual message, as well as donating more to charities and giving back more to those that have helped me over the years. But there are a lot of less concrete goals that I'm working through in my head, and to which I will continue to return to in the future. Am I becoming the type of adult I would have hated 8 or 10 years ago, when I started this blog? Am I compromising what I believe in for the sake of convenience? Am I making a difference, or even doing the right thing? More importantly, are my actions making me happy and helping me to lead a fulfilling life?

I'll leave off with some lyrics I'm working on. The song that goes with it is called "The Optimist" for now.

I've always been who I said I wasn't,
Hiding from the real me.
I'm always ran but I'm done running,
And it feels good to breathe.
I'm tired of lying to myself
About the man I am.
I thought I knew the truth about things,
But now... but now... I understand.

Hey boys and girls

2011-09-21T00:51:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to drop in. Somehow I still average 4-5 hits a day on this blog so I figure if I put new content out there, somebody's gonna read it...

I've got a quiz tomorrow (yes, I'm still in college and have not hazarded into that 'real world' thing yet) so I will make this post short.

Drama in my life continues unabated. Had a pregnancy scare with the girl I'm seeing. Then her ex-boyfriend tried to kill himself. Then she started cutting herself. I've never had someone else's blood on me before, literally. Scary shit.

I played the first gig with my band I was writing stuff with this summer in August. It went so well that I quit the band two days later. Lazy fuckers. Punks are cool til you have to trust them.

Taking the LSAT and GRE in less than two weeks but probably won't go to grad school. I'm working on writing songs and plan on playing my first solo gigs by the end of this year. I've recently received some new equipment that I've been dicking around with and I'm excited to use it in a live setting. I really need to find a drummer, but in a town like Gainesville (where I'm at now) that shouldn't be toooo hard...

But why do you care? Ah, my friend, you don't. Well, neither do I. At least I like to think I don't. But we're both a little more clever than that, wouldn't you say? All this reading and you're still intrigued, hmm?

Oh yeah, I was bitching. This author-chick I considered dating won the University Prize for best poet from the American Academy of Poets or some shit. Damn.

Logged on to Facebook today (first time in a few days) to find that I had 8 fewer friends than the last time I logged in. Among the casualties: two ex-girlfriends had deleted me, as well as two other female friends. I guess I'm just pissing off all the girls I know... the weird part was I hadn't talked to either ex in over 3 months... and they decided in the very same week, independently of each other, to delete me?? A curious circumstance.

In positive news, I don't have cancer (that I know of), I can play about 5 songs that I wrote on guitar (and they don't sound too terrible), I have an apartment, I'm not in debt (in fact I have money, rather shockingly), I'm passing my classes, and I have reasons to be optimistic about my future.

I suppose I'll leave you with a little rap thang I wrote on my cell phone while forced to listen to a particularly frustrating conversation out-to-eat. Sarcasm and irony abound. I realize it's two lines short of a full 16 but I ran out of inspiration after 14 and just don't give a fuck.

Hippies in the streets, shouting "save the trees!",
but it's not the trees dying, it's the Somalis.
Before I give another Dollar to an NGO,
I'm 'a make sure it's non-profit and non-faith-based, too;
cause I don't go to Wal-Mart for scripture,
I go cause of its processed food and cheap, bottled prescriptions.
I'm tired of acting like I'm mad for the state,
when I've done nothing for the country but live here and take a wage.
The American System ain't the only way,
how 'bout we open up our mind to the world and see what they say?
I'm not for pointlessly pushing over empires,
but this system is so hypocritical that I'm tired
of only looking out for number one . . .
who we call the "Second World" don't even have running water!

Have a good night, friendly blog-world denizens.

Tour de France

2011-07-23T14:56:00.002-04:00

. . . is awesome this year. Just wanted to throw that out there. I wish Voeckler had won though . . . the French deserve a victory in their own Tour.

Paranoia and Landmarks

2011-06-04T01:16:00.002-04:00

So I'm feeling very anti-social and paranoid on this Friday night. I can see it getting better, but it's something that will always hang around me, I'm afraid. I rarely fear living a life alone, because I feel quite confident I will flame out or change my ways by 30. I will try my damnedest not to sit around and let my days pass as they did in the past. No more will I be content to subjugation and meek downcastness.

I still say fuck people, but I can't say it enough to delete my Facebook, move out of a city, or even allow myself to do unkindness toward others. The more I understand myself, the less I understand myself, and often, the less I like myself. I often feel unloved, and even worse, unloving. My friends are shitty and unreliable, and my parents and I are on wholly separate planes. I keep secrets from them, that, were they to find out, they might disown me.

But I don't have the mental energy to continue the post. I'm too drained from another day being beaten down by societal forces and being reminded that I hate myself and am awkward, etc.

On another note, last post was the 500th all time on my blog... Hooray!

Perception and Me, Perception and You

2011-03-23T03:43:00.002-04:00

This is my first update in a while to be solely prose-based, which I think is a shame. I have a lot of ideas but do not often take the time to record them. Perhaps my narcisstic, uniquely human urge to record my thoughts in waning in my age. :P I actually... think not.

As someone who feels themselves relatively intelligent (or at least educated) in matters of social science, I am extremely interested in people's perceptions of themselves, of other people, and of authority figures (including government). I feel that people increasingly view government as something that is broken, and as society as something that is fragmented. All we hear about is suicide rates rising, unemployment still high, the nation's debt unbelievably bloated, infrastructure antiquated, the nation polarized over what to do about the future.

All around the world are revolutions, and yet our radicals sit on street corners with signs, content to protest silently. Alexis de Tocqueville observed back in the 1820s that Americans tend to protest within the system, with relatively little difference in thought between them, and I think that there is still some truth in this. After all, we did in fact vote these people into power, so it's not like we didn't sow our own fate or anything... oh... wait. So it makes it a bit more difficult for those who protest to get their voice heard.

It does in fact seem that there are some things that are wrong with this country. Look at Detroit or much of the deep South if you would like good examples. Our GDP per capita continues to rise, while the wealth continues to be homogenized in the hands of the wealthy. There are more millionaires than ever before, yet the unemployment rate is barely budging and the national debt is ballooning all the time.

So whose debt is it? Whose fear is it? Who is winning in this system and who is losing? Should we be revolting as the Tea Partiers suggest, or should we be content to endorse change through the current system. Furthermore, should we even seek substantial change at all?

The best way to begin to answer these many questions is to look to the past. By looking to the past, we may compare our cuurent situation to the way things used to be, and in doing so, ask ourselves whether things have become "better". Furthermore, I suggest we look to the fundamental limitations of our current systems - representative democracy and (relatively-free) market capitalism.

I feel that the fundamental way in which the country differs from the past is in our acceptance of a "permanent" level of debt, and the permeation of different cultures, religions and types of thought across the country, from bottom to top. There is an economic justification for some level of debt, and there is an economic reason behind why our debt had grown so large. Looking to Keynesian economics, we find that John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential and highly-regarded economists of all time, recommends a permanent low level of inflation, around 2-4%. This creates a natural slight debt in the country which promotes growth, due to the fact the people are constantly borrowing in order to fund investment and future investment. This is a positive thing, for when people think for the future, there are much greater eventual payoffs thatn when people only think about themselves and the present.

As for how we got to this level of debt, it comes because we want stuff. Surprisingly, we are a materialistic country, constantly encouraged by mass media which have incentive to encourage consumption. There is a self-reinforcing chain of materialistic thought processes that serve to convince even those who otherwise would abstain from the system to take part. Kids watch TV, listen to radio, go online and watch video and read articles, all while viewing advertisments from people who are advocating any one of various products. These products often are appearance-based, and serve to reinforce the superficial aspects of our culture. The sound bite has take eminence over the speech, the clip over the the video, and the jingle and hook over the song and album.

It's all about PERCEPTION. Kids who grow up without social media have less homogenizing influence on them. In the modern paradigm, young people have more and more ways to evaluate themselves by each other, leading to changes in behavior in order to appear more "normal". Kids have more ways to be ostracized now than ever, and more ways to be indoctrinated into culture. For those whom the dominant culture readily fits, things will work out well for them. But for the many who disagree with its quixotic, often contradictory and hypocritical paradigms, there will be great "culture shock" leading to a lot of identity-searching.

As for the question of whether things used to be better, this is also a matter of perception. People often romanticize the 18th or 19th century, but its difficult to discount the vast amounts of pain and hzrdship that even "middle-class" people had to face in those days. Modern medicine was frighteningly primitive until even the 20th century, people were virulently racist and sexist, and society was just generally far less educated. The notion of taxation was so repugnant to many because there was no such things as public schools or even roads.

With the advent of many forms of technology, we have found oursleves becoming linked ever closer and closer together. We constantly examine each other and constantly appraise other people. Our technology was enabled scrutiny on a whole new level, both into governmental practices and well as "private" ones.

Finally, and as I feel, most crucially, is that people see the world, through their own set of circumstances, causes and effects. These variants among viewpoints, while not always helpful, provide much of the developmental progressions we see.

I am extremely tired to the point of being cross-eyed and I think this post has gone on for just about enough time. Hopefully my thoughts weren't too incoherent.

Best of luck to the Japanese in their time of trouble.

People

2011-03-19T23:29:00.002-04:00

People,

that are less restless than me,

I don't see how they can't see through me.

People,

that are less restless for sure,

I never saw the allure in being so sure.

Yet I keep on,

in view of this,

I try to become rested.

Yeah I keep strong,

as strong as I can,

as strong as can be for one man.

People,

that are less restless than me,

I don't see how they can see to believe.

People,

who never quoted no president,

never found any of this relevant.

Can you try to

calm us down?

Can you tell us how to turn around?

Can you try to

make this work?

I know I'm a restless jerk.

People,

you I never understood.

I always took the bad with the good.

People,

what is it that you perceive?

How can you not believe?

4 Years

2011-02-08T04:38:00.003-05:00

It's been four years since I almost left this Earth.

Took me this long to try to figure out my own worth.

It's been so long since I looked myself in that way.

Always and forever, I will remember that day.

dunhdunhdunhdun

2011-01-21T23:19:00.003-05:00

I am the epitome of bad vibes,

I take lives with my mind.

Good at nothin, I'm always frontin'

I never get asked down the dance path

I'm barely alive.

Globalization Musique Concrete, Etude No. 1, for voice

2010-12-30T05:25:00.005-05:00

. . . Riverrun, past Adam and Steve’s

to UNICEF and Bangladeshi deathdarkness

the subway lights alien-hovering

a crickety crack-crack in pre-dawn

pre-birth stillness, pre-death listlessness

a faun turns its head, black eyes hunted by coyotes

the manatee shot, air-gun clean, a dying breed

the sea stain-swirled, the shore scrubbed smooth

concealed microphones on razor wire to tape the proceedings

you were there in the honeycomb

traveling first on wings to the hive

networking, choreographed dances in dress-up

your suit and face coming off only later

compound eyes, your individuality carefully Ziplocked away

a prayer, lost in the airportshout

echoes down a hallway of picture frames

with unsmiling, precise white men

the chant of the muezzin in sprechgesang on speakerphone

the automated woman asking you to command her

another conversation about technology

a dirty hand turns the faucet, low moans come out

the hollowed out black eyes of the doped-up trader

(he touches you)

another gallon of milk squeezed, jet-engine clean

the motor-oil fumes of mall air

another question, “Que hora,” but no answers

in the McSafety of the glass lobby

the radio static becomes patterned buzzing, an ostinato

piqued on Osteen pheromones and joie de vivre

you hear your call, your lifedance traced out

a single pair of black footsteps connected with dotted lines

your operating system on depth overload

the circle closing

wings sprouted, it’s Sunday

a walk turns into a . . .

So . . . 2010, eh?

2010-12-30T03:54:00.006-05:00

It seems like at the end of every year, I get very retrospective. Maybe it's all the talk of the "Best of the Year" lists and "End of Year" recaps in art, music, and popular culture that spur me to think back on the last year and wonder about my own year.

Well, this year was a bit of a roller coaster. The first 7 or 8 or so months were, for a combination of reasons, pretty much the most awesome, fun-filled, adventuresome and rewarding time of my entire life. The last 4 or 5ish were a downer with a few periods of happiness.

In hindsight, I realize there was really no reason for my year to be quite so turbulent - but that's just how things happened. Into my 3rd decade of life, I still managed to have a LOT of new experiences - enough that will probably end up making this, along with 2007 and 2009, years that I will never forget, and constantly look back on as reference points in my continued growth and development as a human being.

It took a year like this, where I experienced both the powerlessness of the person whose needs are beholden to the State (thanks to my time doing some community service at its behest - don't ask) and the empowerment of being a young guy who isn't entirely slovenly and can manage to put a few genuine sentences together in order to connect with a girl and even make some new friends. It took a year like this, where I took long-distance trips by rented truck, car, train, and bus, to meet people I would've never been exposed to, and which served to reinvigorate my awe of the capabilities of the human will and spirit in the face of adversity.

I spent time in New York, Boston, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Atlanta, staying the night in both rundown rural PA motels and the Intercontinental Buckhead in downtown Atlanta. (I learned to hate ritzy hotels in their overpriced excess and efforts to maintain the illusion of grandeur - I think I'm too much of a misanthrope and a miser to enjoy the fruits of the "high life" sometimes . . . I was charged $19 for 8 hours of Wi-Fi!!!! What BS! The link for the hotel is here http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/intercontinental/en/gb/locations/overview/atlbh if you wanna complain at my behest :) )

I saw Phish and the Smashing Pumpkins live, crossing two major bands off my life-live music bucket list (although this is not to suggest I don't wanna see them again... I would gladly see them again in a heartbeat if they were within 200 miles...) and had a series of adventures while doing it, involving, at various times,

being lost for multiple hours in the 'hood
being routed to the wrong COUNTY for a restaurant by a GPS system (I hate GPS Nav systems . . . just read a fucking map)
being stuck at a crossing for a 120-car train moving slowly into the station (a great way to catch up on contemporary graffiti styles if you have the 45 minutes)
watching friends hold a brief conversation with Billy Corgan while they were tripping on acid, and getting invited to watch the Pumpkins play their 6-song private soundcheck set, and *almost* having the balls to walk onto the tour bus
being in the Phish parking lot for over an hour and only accosted to buy drugs twice
being unable to get back to the Intercontinental due to the fact that Atlanta's 4th of July fireworks display was being held... across the street... yet despite the fact that it's one of the "world's largest" and the fact I was less than a mile away I still couldn't see it because the city is so goddamn hilly and there's a shit-ton of trees in random places and absolutely NOWHERE for public parking, resulting in a midnight stroll around the city, getting completely lost and being unbelievably stoned while looking up and realizing we were in the Olympic Village, under the torch for the'96 Games, and this fact not helping us find our way AT ALL . . .

And then there were the downsides. A relatively uneventful semester at college, a painful breakup, the death of two close family members (which saw my extended family do some terrible things all in the name of money), and a general loss of confidence followed in succession. If I marveled at how far I had come in the last few years during the first half of the year, then more recently I was reminded at how little some aspects of my thinking have changed, and how far I still have yet to go.

It's easy to contemplate giving up the struggle for personal improvement. As you lose friends, get in disagreements, feel slighted and left out despite your best intentions and efforts, have personal and professional failings despite your best efforts, see good friends turn to drugs and crime and wonder what made you choose such unsavory individuals as friends, it gets easy not just to question others, but yourself as well. And in this deep, reflective period of self-questioning, it gets easy to wonder, in the deepest sense:

"Do I know what I'm doing?"

This question is extremely difficult to answer without evaluating your actions holistically in terms of prductivity and progress . . . was I working toward a goal, and furthermore, did I accomplish what I set out to? In broader terms, is my goal a good, worthwhile and fulfilling one that will leave me better off than before after having acquired it, or will the quest for its acquisition be a pointless wild-goose chase?

To this end, I have three New Years' (apostrophe before or after s? I have no idea) Resolutions (I can surmise that you, faithful blog reader, were guessing these were coming eventually).

1. Figure out what the hell I'm doing after I get my undergrad degree, and until that happens, get grad-school-ass-kissing-good grades.

2. Work on my prose, poetry and music and get professional-quality releases for at least two of the three. The emphasis here is definitely on the music at the expense of the other two, and in coalescing the musicians I have around me into a viable band.

3. Find a(nother) girlfriend. Not a hook-up buddy, not a booty call, not a one-time fling. Okay, maybe those last three can be temporary stand-ins . . . but seriously. And no more long-distance drama. UGH.

With that, I will get up off the psychiatrists' couch I call this blog and into my bed, where I will go back to sleep (hopefully) now that my brain will be whirring a little less.

Thanks to all those who have commented on my few posts throughout the year; it's good to know that there are some who find what I have to say worthwhile . . . and I always appreciate some constructive criticism or a worthwhile link.

It's been six and a half years since I started this thing . . . it's hard to believe. And six and a half years later I still don't know how to end a post, so I'll do something novel. I'll say goodbye.

Goodbye.

A new black

2010-10-25T18:49:00.004-04:00

Well I've felt sad before - a metaphor

for my disconnection -

no resurrection without a downturn.

Me and society, juxtaposed, without clothes,

I thought to know was to NOT know.

I now know better.

This new feeling, it's like hitting the ceiling

and still reeling while you're

breaking through a fiery floor and getting burned.

It's a new black,

a lack of context.

And I'm vexed what comes next in this paradigm.

It's so wrong that this is right,

I'm frightened this is common,

the trauma that's summoned should never be normal or fine.

I heard "For No One"- a sun rising

on a black winter day,

the rays crisscrossing the clouds,

I think out loud

how proud I am to be having the problems of the masses,

like molasses,

I move slowly toward the center;

and remember when it felt right to be wrong,

for so long I felt that I dealt with life's problems alone.

Give me a home, leave me alone, be with me, gimme context,

I'm vexed what next direction I should take.

I wake and bake to shake off the feelings of these dealings,

revealing my character in the time that it takes.

And I'm off to revel in the hurt,

newly alert to the pain

in refrain after verse after refrain

and refrain

from being too mired in the depths of my sadness,

I'm glad this experience has made me whole.

I wanna move on - be gone! but she's

still right there, now I'm aware this takes

all of my soul.

Give it weeks and weeks

and months and months

and thinking more I feel as a dunce,

sullen and confused, disabused,

waiting for

my teacher, my guide to give me more lessons.

Now she's beckoning, "come back to me"

and I'm free, at once,

and yet still locked up

in chains of thought to remain in flux.

Now what?

Your move, you're the smooth one

whose smooth tongue got us in this

rough withdrawal.

It's so small -

the window through which love can fit,

and I keep sitting on the sill with the window closed.

Now it's time to walk away,

the sun's final rays hidden away

behind the clouds of my mind's eye.

And I find my new black -

it wants to make a pact,

but there's no agreement to find.

So I linger, light-blind, with my blinds open

still hoping for some kind of glimmer in the dark.

A shimmer, a twitch,

the clock ticks and I realize my life

waits, my fate unsigned.

In dawn,

I can see myself shutting the door, for no more war, but from war is peace and a sweet release I realize I love, I struggle in the push and tug, I feel foggy and groggy and yet somehow smug this fake-love I had feels so much realer when this shit goes bad. And now I'm wanting to change my name, do something drastic . . .

I open a book, and read to close the chasm.

The Dystopian Nature of Facebook satire

2010-09-27T22:52:00.003-04:00

This is a repost from my Facebook in case you aren't friends with me on there.

IT has occurred to me, in the manner of a thought that will never unoccur, that Facebook is an undeniably dystopian, base, and downright unhealthy virtual organ. I return to its ugly glory only because I, like anyone else on the highway, will slow down for a large enough car crash.

What is my proof? Well, it lies it multiple areas. First of all is its concept of "news". News to Facebook is, amazingly, all your friends' pictures, statuses, and other random shit. This is not news, in any sense of the word except the middle-school gossip one. This is my weakest point because its proof lies in a definition of terms.

Second is its nature of "history". History, like news, is all what YOU, dear user, define it to be. If your middle name was Quentin as of four minutes ago, even when I added you last week, my friend-add symbol will claim your middle name was Quentin then, too. Does this remind anyone else of the work of one Winston Smith in one 1984? WE ARE AT WAR WITH OCEANIA, WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH OCEANIA. My middle name is Quentin, it has always been Quentin.
What say you? You commented on my friend's wall! You're not even friends with him! But aargh, you slimy shit, you deleted the post announcing to the rest of the world your act, leaving just the act itself. "If a tree falls in the forest, well, I certainly didn't cut it down!" Facebook is the One State, with you, yes, YOU, a worker for the MiniTruth.

I realize now that what may be most depressing about the dystopian nature of Facebook is the freedom. Facebook is merely what you want it to be. If you love social interaction for its own sake, you will love Facebook. However, freedom for Facebook also allows for freedom of identity in its most abstract sense - and this is what makes its dystopia greatest - because it appears to be operating in your best interest. If I may borrow from Plato for a moment, a man which is most evil is that which appears to be a law-abiding citizen and trusted, respected member of society, yet actually subverts the system through careful, surreptitious attacks to gain benefit for only himself at the expense of all others. The question then becomes, is it evil if I may lie about any particular aspect of my life? With my 2,469 friends, endless galleries of pictures, and . . . you DIDN'T know I was a model? . . . The impulse to lie in relation becomes that much stronger.

How important is it that we truthfully represent ourselves? Aren't all outward appearances carefully-crafted falsehoods? Or is seeing believing? Facebook would like you to believe it. What is true now has always been true, popular support in sheer numbers will always take precedence over the rare and unpublicized, and the soundbite, phrase, or clip will always be pre-eminent over the complete recording, essay, and movie. Damn it, Facebook, maybe you are merely this soulless culture's soulless self-reflection.

An idea

2010-09-19T21:48:00.002-04:00

Hate between groups is an evolutionary tool built into our genetic code. It is present because of the natural human tendency to form groups. When these groups amalgamate into larger groups and larger groups yet, and then these groups compete amongst one another for common resources, an inevitable evolutionary logic to fear and distrust the competing group kicks in. Almost all hate that arises can be classified under one of two types: hate because of a perceived lifestyle difference (relating back to evolution as two different cultures each find fault with the way the other culture conducts itself due to their innate evolutionary "life map") or because of competition and allocation over shared resources.

Eliminating hate the world over will be a difficult task. People are the same everywhere, it is said, and will not unlearn their evolutionary tendencies easily. Sometimes a little hate is a good thing - it is also said the extremes exist (among social behaviors ie violence) to define the medians. What I am saying is that it should be perfectly natural for the average person to hate a serial killer or pedophile.

But will science succeed in dissolving any of these types of hatred? If we eliminate none of the world's hate by our technological advancements, then maybe we should question the end goals toward which we are aiming, and perhaps redirect our time and efforts accordingly. If we find that most serial killers and pedophiles' actions can be explained by brain anomalies, and that said anomalies may be fixed by certain medications or treatments, then has science enabled society to do the unthinkable - forgive these people and absolve them as beings for the crimes of their minds?

My idea has one implication that makes me think it is important (oh yes, so my self-important self finds this so important that it is sherking homework to write this out). It is that hate is not an amorphous, unidentifyable blob of a feeling or emotion but a sentiment that can be subjected to scientific study. A tad ambitious, overarching, and broad perhaps.

But I'm no social psychologist, I'm an undergrad up kinda late distracted from his music theory homework. What do I know? Fathom it, my dear blog readers, and fathom well.

Fountain of Youth

2010-08-23T05:48:00.003-04:00

Your river eyes cried, I sighed - please don't let this be the end. You mean too much to me to be just friends. I never thought it would come to this, so much turbulence over so few incidents. It's incidental, the thing about your father. All the shit I've heard about your brother. You may look like him, but there's no other like you.

River run, river swell - be well, my fair child. I meant nothing more than to make you smile. I ask questions because I care, there's no dare or games when it comes to your behavior. I would take a bus or a train, and go days out of my way to get to you. And then you tell me that my feelings aren't true? You may not think I do, but I only care about you.

Whitewater rafting in your class of rapids, I certainly don't mean to make this a habit. I've never liked the rolling of the sea to shore, I like the peace of the beach, and the calm - no more. I can't be your lifeguard on this ocean of pain, trying to discern love while your heart pounds away. I never thought that hours would feel like years, but the last two have and now I'M close to tears.

I've walked for miles in this heat on this street downtown, lost in a strange place with no help around. Confounding the critics who said I'd never stay with it, I wonder if I blundered. With every street I pass I fear less terrain, I long to see the place where your river meets my plain.

This is dedicated to anyone who's suffered through a tough spell in their relationship in the last month or two. Some things are meant to last, some things are meant to pass.

Welcome back my friends

2010-01-01T03:09:00.002-05:00

. . . to the show that never ends. I'm so glad you could attend.

Well, I just realized that people cause me a lot of stress and anxiety. I realized that without worrying about people, my life would be a lot simpler. Thus, I have come back to the blog.

I should have long ago realized that it is far more beneficial to me to come and blather my thoughts on the interweb this way rather than on the satan that is facebook. Many moons ago, a good friend of mine insisted that I get a facebook; now I barely even talk to this person. Many moons ago, I had a girlfriend who went on FB frequently and posted shit, and I had hoped that FB would facilitate our communication. We ended up basically breaking up on FB.

I only use FB sparingly, and I realized it's essential worthlessness to me, seeing as how I hate people and people hate me. So, I have gone back to the good old blog, as if to underline how little I have changed in the last 5 years.

I think I liked the me of 5 years ago better than the me of now. 5 years ago I was more sure of myself, less rejected and hurt, less baggage and more optimism. Now I've seen the sights, played the game, come out on bottom and have gotten sick and tired of all the bullshit. I'm tired of playing the game, and would like to exit it. No more posturing, no more reliance on others - when I know deep inside that really I am the sole arbiter of my fate.

You think I'm eloquent? Intelligent? I'm irrelevant, not even listened to, people scoff when they hear me get to rhyming, I'm like simple Simon - I'm good in theory, but every time the party starts nobody gets near me, I'm like the golden arches - an edifice that stands for nothing. And yet you dare to tell I'm frontin? I'm an asshole, yeah right fuck you. I'm disrepectful? Conscience making you blue because I knew from the second I spotted ya that you were a bullshitter and shouldn't be trusted? Because your iron values are rusted through? Can you give me a reason you hate? Because your mother told you people like me weren't so fucking great? And is fuck the word you use when you're so confused you don't know what to do? Is my perfect grammar flummoxing you? Are you feeling violent and defensive, almost effeminate the way you counter me? If I was a brother, would you idolize me? And for every cat that climbs up a tree there's 90 dumbasses that don't know to flee. You say people misunderstand? Shit, my best friends go and never speak to me because they think I'm unstable and unable to keep a straight face when the cards are on the table. I'm a beast at poker, I'll loan you some tips, bitch you better not stop moving your hips because I realize the game doesn't stop at the table - life's the game and I'm playing it while I'm able.

Hard to believe . . .

2009-10-05T02:23:00.002-04:00

It's been over three months since I last posted here. I can remember when a gap of three days called for an apology and a post of extra length. This blog served for so long as a place where I could spout my grievances and flex what I perceived to be my intellectual muscle.

For so long I held so much against so many people for the sole reason that I thought I was smarter than they were.

Now I take nothing for granted, shun only those who present their actions as being worthy of scorn because of inexcusable behaviors such as stealing or violence, and try to be as open and unequivocal as possible with people. This has led me to question my own beliefs, values and actions enough times that I feel I understand life's paradoxes and ironies to an extent that I could not have even imagined only a couple years ago.

At the same time, I have learned (the hard way) that you cannot keep kicking yourself for past mistakes or perceived missed opportunities. Moving on and living in the present is the only way to go about things and keep yourself sane.

I feel that the more I learn, the more I understand that I have even more to learn. However, I feel that the end goal in my life is more readily apparent: happiness. This important but seemingly obvious revelation allows me to try to keep myself in check and to get my head on straight when I start doubting myself or getting bogged down in things that don't matter.

Undoubtedly, I will post here at some point in the future. But for me, this blog has served its intensely personal purpose (expressing my feelings when I needed to vent) and a uniquely public one as well (the fact that I put these deep thoughts of mine out on the internet for anyone to read). This is why posting on my blog is does not anymore play a role in my life the way it did three or four years ago: I have moved past many of these issues.

After so many good times with this blog, it's hard to see it go neglected like this with only the most seldom post and occasional thought. I thus want to wish my blog a formal and final thanks, as it embodies so much of who I am and who I was. Indeed, its title, "I Don't Care", could not be any more accurate. One of these things that I am still working out is how to show vulnerability: showing people I care when everything I do indicates that I don't.

487 posts and five years later, it's pretty clear that I DO Care.

Posting from the living room of my apartment, up at college, two and a half years after a night I barely survived, I thank this blog for being what kept me on this Earth at times.

Be still, my blog, and sleep.

Primal Dream

2009-07-01T18:35:00.002-04:00

I took this poem/ramble from the depths of my journal. Initially when I wrote it I didn't think much of it but now after rereading it I'm starting to like it more gradually. Some parts I think are really good. I prefer the look of it handwritten but typing will have to suffice for the purpose of this blog as uploading a scan would be waaaaay too much work.

-----

I wandered, looking for lonely lighted landscapes

with decoys so no one would see my intent.

Scan the horizon . . . no intruders

I seize involuntarily because my will is spent.

The cold, I can bare it in context of all that I have;

the glares and stares, I'm not so sure-

it may drive me back to where

I don't ever want to go.

No theres no iPods or cell phones where death walks-

stilted lines of stilted jargon is how money talks.

And death needs to speak rarely, if at all

for His victims can predict His patterns, breaths and all.

I feel vibrations that are not noise

I dropped from the same walls

I walk the same halls

so whether there's mystery in that,

You decide.

Castles of crystalline corridors beckon-

come to me, come be free

but freedom is not what I want.

Your face

Your touch, your hair, your smile,

your smell, your laugh your punctuation!

The books you read

the snacks you eat, the water not quite full but resting on the edge . . .

Oh, there's a method to your madness

(I hope.)

Watch me now!

As I whistle and shiver and whimper and whine,

amazed at how He Who Needs No One

is so bereft in times like these.

When did it hit you-

when there was no ride?

But there was!

It was right in front of you.

Straining, grunting, groaning, sighing,

You would strain to appear unaffected.

But Your act grows tiresome - even to your home crowd.

It's not all the fault of left brain-

no pain comes without source,

from sources come light,

between them is dark (says science).

Tell ME there is no source of dark-

I know there is.

Otherwise everything would grow green,

and all the brains would grow pink,

and there would be no reason

to see my script flashing wildly before me

and no reason for me to laugh aloud

at the sight of your fingers

motionless

cold as I am now.

My sentence not yet fully served,

I ask for release.

The guard says: "You know the way out."

And this, being the ultimate paradox, leaves me dumbfounded.

grrrrr

2009-06-17T14:34:00.002-04:00

Sometimes, in spite of myself, and despite all my best efforts, I still manage to get pissed off at neo-cons. I mean, really, sometimes, I read an editorial or an article in the popular media and just go, *sighhhh*. I would've, say, three or four years ago, been inclined to be either outraged "what are they thinking!", bewildered "what are they thinking?" or a mixture of both "what are they thinking?!?!?" But now, thanks to my grade-A white American education, I can sit back and rest assured that I know, to a large extent, what these people are thinking, why they are thinking it, and furthermore, why they feel their thoughts are important and correct enough to project.

Dear blog faithful, if you feel like getting your feathers all a-ruffle, then venture forth with these fine examples of what currently passes for American political discourse. Sit back and watch your brain implode faster than Detroit in the 21st century.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124467678369503997.html

I mean, REALLY, Mr. Bolton, you're not seriously STILL ADVOCATING A PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE POLICY AFTER THE LAST 5 ATTEMPTS AT THAT POLICY WENT COMPLETELY FUBAR, are you, Mr. Bolton, o former secretary to the motherfucking United Nations?!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124467554761003983.html#

loomia_si%3Dt0%253Aa16%253Ag2%253Ar1%253Ac0.219152%253Ab25219290%26articleTabs%3Dartcl(Sorry about the link formatting issues)

Maybe it was my fault for forgetting how conservative the WSJ is. Maybe I'm naive, and maybe Barack Obama's entire campaign and presidency is all just a giant cover-up for advancing the real left-wing agenda: turning America into a *shudder* European-style *cringe* welfare state. Queue the fainting.

I would post another article but I trust that you've had enough trauma. Plus I have an economics test to go to.

Hold on, magnolia.

Things I want to buy

2009-06-12T01:49:00.003-04:00

2004 silver proof set (http://republicjewelry.com/2004-silver-proof-coin-p-1036.html)
Volkswagen GTI (auto only) or Nissan Altima
LG enV Touch (http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedPhoneId=4787&changingCompletedOrder=&reviewTab=true)
Acoustic/electric ukelele (http://cgi.ebay.com/LANIKAI-Concert-Ukulele-Acoustic-Electric-Belcat_W0QQitemZ130311573406QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item1e572ccf9e&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A1%7C66%3A4%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A0%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A200)
Any US coin with real gold in it or more than 200 years old
500 shares of Bank of America
Tickets to Gogol Bordello, Phish, and Radiohead concerts
Love and happiness

This is no thesis

2009-04-20T02:50:00.003-04:00

I was born with the wrong blood

I was raised in the wrong hood

I don't know what I should

I was born in the wrong skin

I was born with the wrong kin

I don't have the accent

I don't have the temperament

I don't have the common sense

I don't have the eloquence

You get t-t-t-tongue tied in cut time

I get tongue tied in no time

Like I'd write you a rhyme

My heart gained a new verse

When I looked into your eyes

My heart gained a new prize

I saw tomorrow

I forgot today

I saw the ocean in the way

You cried for me

One light on in the bedroom

And there's glue in my teeth

And I know I need a broom

But there's no sweeping away grief

I suppose this is only false

My repose will find my faults

Washed away by the noon sun

And again shall your moons have begun

I drank from the same cup and you drank from the Bible

Hell I'm no disciple

Hell, I'm a disciple

But to the church of sin and whatever your saint is

Hell I'll pray

Hell - I'll only pray to

For heaven and all the angels and all g/God(')(s) m(a)/(e)n

May not have me

May never be friends

Grandpa's Caddy lies alone in a Minnesota junkyard

And I asked why

And you told me lies

Fifteen years and a fake divorce and so many dead tears

And a broken heart

And I've fell apart

And I won't ever cry again to make you proud no I won't let it out

No I won't let it out

Can't I be let out

And I would pray to your g(G)od but I'm afraid of H(h)im and may he love you

Oh I love you

G(g)od I wish I (you) loved you (me)

Coda silence and no punctuation

There's no t's in H20 and NaCl

I've composed myself through off-time sniffles and ruminations

I never said goodbye, and I'll never see you when I go to Hell

I'll be back for these words

I'll be back for your swords

Oh please pray for me

Just hold me tight

It's been too long for the heart

Don't want to bother you,

, good night

(eight lines later

and now you're selling drugs(

But not the kind of sniff and shove

Of scratch and sniff

These don't set off no smoke detractor

So sad you can't even cry

Someone's knocking but you don't wanna see them so you don't answer

Loom at your perfect grammar

Desolving in to prefect jabber

Oh I all the tears I have ever cried

None of them were for the beauty I spied

In you

Slap that shit

Yea gimme that thump

Like a cigarette ad

Oh now who's ye(a)r fad

But now there's more, and no I didn't wanna let you be his whore

And now I wish I didn't have to see you anymore

Where do I draw the line between friend and whore

Where do I talk about the synthesis

Where do I talk about my . . . rhesus

Coda

Silence.

what the fuck

2009-04-05T05:52:00.001-04:00

i just ran 4.5 miles

in about 45 minutes

and all i wanted was to talk to you

i want to know where you are

i don't know if i want you

i want to know where you are

i think i'm gonna die

i want to know where you are

i think that i'm gonna go fly

and i wanna fly where you are

Death harmonic

2009-02-22T17:48:00.002-05:00

"Death Harmonic" or, Drugs are Good

I have tripped on Vicodin

Acetaminophen, the works

I have slept with eyes open

With toads groping for my furs

Heard voices come out, sounds

That did not exist - and still surround

Me every time I stop

I flop over

Death harmonic

I eat food, it comes out

A devout process that I hate

I flail out for things untouched

Escaping from my clutch, I lay in wait

Disappointed, still disjointed

My dreams anoint you my dream

In real life I crown you chronic

Watch me frown on my way down

To death harmonic

Tired of my brain so tired

I'm hard-wired to want you

Asexuals not withstanding

I'm demanding some new truth

I want a gene that makes me love

All the faggots so unloved because of me

I want to see someone fight

End the blight so I can sleep tonight

In death harmonic

Mirrors tell me all the lies

Glass spies upon my being

Had my cake and ate yours too

I'm not new to your fleeing

Fleeting thoughts are merely words

Stillborn, aborted burned, infinite victims

To the reaper of the norm

Damn this raging static storm - I'm drowning

Death harmonic

I just want to think again

You're my friend, like a child, forever

But forever falls like feather dams

You man the mouth cannon and treble

All my dreams and all my actions

And reactions, struck catatonic

Incapable of move or thought

Throat caught

I'm trapped

Left to a death harmonic

Word of the Day

2009-01-06T01:19:00.000-05:00

Hello, kids!!

Today's word of the day is:

YOURSELF

Remember, always live for YOURSELF!

This message brought to you by: cynicism.

Money, Love and Change

2008-11-16T12:13:00.004-05:00

Well, blog faithful, here you have it - my first legit post in a couple months. No excuses, no nothing . . . I have not posted on here because I have been too busy and because, for the first time in my life, I have been around people, and people I am friends with, enough that the reason I used to keep a blog (venting at my frustrations and expressing my thoughts and opinions) now is done primarily in my life to other people.

Whatever you make of this, I'm not sure personally what to make of the change, because I love this blog as a time capsule of my mindset at any given point. Now, all I have is occasional conversations to remind me as well as the occasional extremely long phone conversation (my phone saves all call times in a folder for some reason). In return, though, I get the benefit of closer human relationships.

One thing I would like to put in writing here is that I learned a lot in the last few months. I have learned so much that I'm not sure I could get it all or even most of it out by sitting down here at a keyboard for a week and typing straight, with my hunting-and-pecking and other fingers pointlessly resting on the rest of the keys like I use home rows. I could never even remember everything either . . . some lessons are just too fleeting, some messages too subtle to be noticed on any other than a subconscious level. Some times a whole thought, a whole fucking novel even, is the turn of a head and a look, a look and a body gesture with just that sort of posture. It's almost like a dance the way people change their expression and posture. And sometimes I dance back, but it takes just the right curve of your lips into a smile or a seductive stare to make me tango, and I don't mean to be passive, don't get me wrong, but sometimes it's just so beautiful to watch, and let the novel write itself. Sometimes it's also beautiful to jump into the plot, though, and shake things up a little bit. (Queue wink face)

I now evaluate peoples' behavior much differently than I did 5 or 6 months ago. Some of it is more in a positive light, much of it is in a more negative light. Either way, I am continually astounded and reminded of my own helplessness at times, my utter inconsequentiality. Other times, I feel pretty big, like I could make a difference, like I'm a good dancer and this just became a ballroom in here. There's still a lot of things that people my age tend to enjoy doing with other people that I cannot reconcile my value system to. I reject these activities on some sort of moral grounds. But this list of activities that offend me or that I have a distaste for has shrunken significantly, least of all; because I now participate, or sometimes, allow myself to passively experience, activities which I would have not even thought about ever doing 12 or 18 months ago.

I feel like a graph - imagine 1/square root of x. Y represents amount of knowledge about myself I have yet learn. X is time. The graph keeps getting smaller and smaller, I keep learning more and more. At the same time, though, there is still so much to learn - the area under the curve is practically infinite - and I will never learn it all. I feel the important thing I have experienced is not necessarily that since I have come to UF my Y value has gone much, much, closer to 0 (though it has!) but that I realized my graph has more dimensions. I may gain something in knowledge or experience, but at the same time, I lose a little bit of the mystery and the sexy vagueness that held the place of actual knowledge. Yeah, I like to be enlightened, but sometimes what you learn is quite disappointing when compared to how useful you thought the information would be.

So, I guess, here I am. I am living the quintessential college experience. (I am tiny.) At the same time, though, I am recognizing each and every day how my experience is unique in context of the greater, emotional, social and physical knowledge I have received. (I am so great!) It strikes me as profound, for instance, that no one knows exactly the same as I know about a given subject, in ANY area (emotional, social, physical). Some people that may know very close to the same as me, though, may use their knowledge differently, because their value and belief system makes them interpret the incoming information in a different way (neither tight nor wrong).

I've found that it's these people, along with those that interpret things in a similar way as I do, that I enjoy talking to the most. (Someone reading this just threw their hands up or shook their head and went DUHH!!!!) When I talk to people who think like I do, yet understand more or less about certain things, it serves as a comfortable reassurance of what I think I know. It also allows me to find my holes in my own thinking when I am talking to someone who thinks similarly to me and I hear them saying something that may be right on a superficial level or on a momentary basis, but in the grand scheme of things is pretty untrue or otherwise disagreeable to me. I enjoy talking to other people on a similar or higher intellectual level yet with different values than I do because it not only allows me to pinprick individual points of my beliefs, but to examine the whole foundation upon which my beliefs fall.

I have a friend who thinks similarly to me but in a more wide-eyed and optimistic way. He often calls me, and introduces me to others as, "the smartest person I've ever met". I'm more than willing to accept the superlative, but I have to question what his criteria for intelligence are. I think about it for a while and I come to the conclusion that he judges intelligence by how closely he see's another person's viewpoint as matching up with his own. If you think like he does but can elaborate on a higher level about it than he can, then you, in his eyes, are a genius. Now, he doesn't do this consciously, and he's not pompous on a conscious level, so I find the whole thing very interesting as a window into another person's mind and thought pattern. Of course, this may all sound a bit cynical to you (rightly, might I add). So I'd like to add that I know I can't totally pigeonhole his opinion of me as being evaluable in the context of his own want for behavioral self-affirmation. He is, after all, a smart guy.

I fear less, because I know more. That sounds like something that wound sound good in Latin. I think it's my new motto. But as I look at it and let my mind roll over it a couple times, I begin to think that maybe that's only what I WANT my motto to be - and that it's not actually a good description of my intellectual changes.

I can say more, because I know more.

Or maybe something related to how I gain while losing something at the same time: I have traded intellectual clouds for concrete.

Ay, there's the rub!! I can't even give myself a manifesto!! I'd be a horrible revolutionary . . .

$$$$$

2008-10-15T11:48:00.002-04:00

Saints Row 2 - October 14th
Fable 2 - October 21st
Guitar Hero IV - October 26th
Fallout 3 - October 28th
Gears of War 2 - November 7th
Call of Duty: World at War - November 11th

What the fuck. How am I supposed to have any money/time left?!?!?!?

Don't worry, this is our secret

2008-10-14T23:12:00.002-04:00

There's something in between friends, and a girlfriend, you know?
I'm not just going to be his googly-eyed girl.

I guess she doesn't smoke when she fucks.

I know that this is not goodbye . . .

2008-09-15T20:02:00.002-04:00

I'm so tired! Iraq quagmire! Malaise malaise!
Stock market down! Republican town! Malaise malaise!
Hard drive erased! High-speed chase! Malaise malaise!
Ratings tank! Failing banks! Malaise malaise!
Malaise malaise malaise!

So begins the greatest song that is yet to be written. I am writing it currently and when it is done the guitar pro tab of it will be worth a million dollars.

If you're wondering about the 45-day gap in posts, it's because my computer crashed four (4) times in the last month, and I've been "adjusting" to "college life".

There are many stories to tell, many songs to be sung, many hearts to be broken, many lives to be taken. But I'll survive, and I'll see you on the other side.

Update to come at a date yet unknown. I've learned so much in the past three weeks that a full update would take up 100 pages, but I can try.

I am the upper class. I am the ruling caste.

http://ihateannefrank.blogspot.com/

2008-07-21T01:37:00.000-04:00

http://ihateannefrank.blogspot.com/

The Dark Night: Official Review

2008-07-18T16:32:00.002-04:00

This is my official review of The Dark Night.

9.8/10

Go see it.

Honorable Mention

2008-07-10T22:35:00.003-04:00

My good friend Jon (also known to those of the infamous Frau Doktor Bogard Deutsche Klasse as Herr Everhart) has begun a blog that will likely reflect his quite unusual sense of humor with a commentary on various things he finds fit to commentate upon. His blog, named "Fecal Brain Matter" for a reason I'm not entirely sure of, is viewable at the following URL:
http://th3dogsbollocks.blogspot.com/
Comment on one of his posts and mention me or my blog in it, and I will personally email you an amusing video of myself with my new webcam (nudity available upon request, sarcasm mandatory).

While I'm blogging, I might as well mention a couple things on my mind recently. I got a new laptop recently (Dell Inspiron 1720) which is pretty spiffy although somewhat tarnished by the stain of Vista, as it has frozen at least eight times in the three days I've had it. However, I just have to put it in time-out and it comes unfrozen after a while, making it only a minor inconvience.

This new laptop of mine has the aforenentioned webcam that I was actually going to use to do a "video post". However, I quickly found the limitations of this as the necessity of live video means that you actually have to plan out and organize what you want to say beforehand. This is a problem for me for two reasons:

1. I am disorganized
2. My brain moves faster than my mouth

This resuts in many moments on camera where my impromptu monologue causes my brain to quickly switch topics and/or ramble down tangents while forgetting the original point of them, among other long periods of "uhhhhhhs" and "ummmms". Typing is better from this standpoint because it allows me to think, and to therefore focus my thoughts due to the limited speed at which my fingers can move. Finally, there's the problem of my jawdropping attractiveness. I'm afraid that women and gay men would not be able to focus on my message while looking at me. *wink*

But I suppose that I might as well post it, just for the hell of it, if only to remind myself why I never want to do it again.

In sports, LE TOUR DE FRANCE has begun again. Yes, the most difficult event in all of sports (imagine running a marathon every day for a month up and down mountains) has returned and it, of course, is amazing. Unfortunately we do not have a correspondant in France this year (former blog poster Jeff made a couple posts from Paris and from the countryside last year) but we do have me. I wont bother summing the results thus far up for you, but I will direct you over to http://www.versus.com/tdf/ where they have complete, up-to-date coverage. Watch it every morning on Versus. It usually starts between 7 and 8:30 AM live with prime-time expanded coverage at 8 PM.

One final observation/recommendation and then I'm done. If you are ever feeling bored with a task you are doing and you have the option of listening to music, turn on the Bee Gees' Greatest Hits and just jam away. With falsetto and synth bass flowing through you, you will be the envy of all your classmates/cooworkers with your newfound ability to enjoy practically any activity. Listening to "Jive Talkin'", "Nights on Broadway", "New York Mining Disaster 1941", and of course "Staying Alive", among MANY others, will cause irreversible harm to your genitalia but two bounces in your step.

Until next time, Blog Nation, good night and good luck.

I'm bored,

2008-06-29T22:56:00.003-04:00

therefore, I blog.

Not exactly Descartes, but when I don't post in three weeks, something needs to be said, right?

First thing I want to do is respond to the comment from "J. Cousteau" on my last post. I'm going to go out on a limb and venture that this "J. Cousteau" has something in common with a certain "Joe" other than first initial. But anyway. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Cousteau should understand the facetious nature of my post. The entire point was to show how illegal downloading is a pain in the ass (at least for programs and n00bs who don't have any fancy-schmancy programs on their computer) and quite often it's worth your while to just buy the damn thing.

Second thing I want to do is comment on Joe's latest update about his music. It is extremely similar in grammar and syntax to the average Thom Yorke post made on Dead Air Space, Radiohead's blog. I'm not sure if this similarity was intended or used facetiously.

Third thing I want to do is comment on the message of Mr. Cousteau's comment. I protest the language "have sapped slowly from the masses". This is the point that hard-core liberals always make about consumers: they can't control their spending. Things are taken from consumers, consumers never give anything. That's why we need 89,000 social safety nets, right?

If the cited "universities, government programs, etc." were really so lecherous, then people would . . . stop spending money on them!! Capitalism is Darwinian in nature - efficient businesses that deliver to consumers in a way that makes them the most happy stay in business; businesses that are inefficient or otherwise fail to adequately meet the needs of the consumer are toast. You should be thankful that we live in a country where the masses can actually afford college, and where government is actually (somewhat) effective in implementing things that will help the people.

Of course I'm not looking at this through rose-tinted glasses - I despise the tax cuts on the rich and the Iraq War and the broken health-care system as much as the next person. However - and this is a large caveat - I find the language "dying on the hook" to be way too strong to describe Americans right now. Public debt is waaaaaaaaaaaaay too high (personal savings as a percentage of income was -.4% in 2005 - yes, that's NEGATIVE point four percent) but thats as a result of there being so many great things to spend it on. That's why I feel that what we're in right now (a good-old fashioned recession) is very good for our economy. Just like a forest fire kills all the weak plants and clears out all the underbrush that leeches off of the trees, a recession gets consumers who were spending too much (*cough* housing market bubble *cough*) to cut back and make things more stable.

I'd personally like to see the stock market tack down to late 1999 levels (~10,000-11,000) before bottoming out. This will allow the fucked up subprime lenders to start again in an economy that can only go up, as well allow Tech 2.0 and its billion-dollar babies to put up or get cut up.

But what do I know?

S.O.S.

2008-06-28T21:21:00.002-04:00

hello
i'veholedmyselfupinmyhouse
recordingthisthing
itwillbedonebyseptember
forsure
thx

Why Can't Illegal Downloading Be More User-Friendly?

2008-06-07T17:44:00.003-04:00

I just want to start this post off by saying that I will no longer address readers of this blog as "blog faithful". You will hereafter be called "blog nation". As part of my efforts to make my blog readers be more sheeplike and in an effort to convince them they are more homogenous and united than they really are, the "nation" label should serve these goals.

Anyway, so onto the content of the post that deals with the title. I think this could be classified as a good old-fashioned editorial rant (back in '05 and '06 when I had more time on my hands the blog was filled with these).

So I was listening to some music (Bon Iver, to be specific) and I thought the chords he was playing on his song "Skinny Love" (off the album For Emma, Forever Ago - check it out if you like acoustic or folk) sounded pretty easy. So I wanted to look up the tabs. I naturally went to my good friend site www.911tabs.com (I promise they didn't pay me for that mention). I searched and found a couple tabs for "Skinny Love" but I wanted to see sheet music for it because I was having trouble hearing some of the chord changes indicated.

So I naturally then downloaded a Guitar Pro tab for it. If you're unfamiliar with Guitar Pro, just think of it as the most borderline-legal thing there is next to Max Hardcore's adult movies. It allows people to create fake sheet music for songs, and allows users to play the sheet music with a variety of MIDI "instruments" - everything from horns to guitars to drums.

I had downloaded the demo version for free off of their website. Because Guitar Pro's makers want me to loathe them, the demo version comes without the "real sound" engine, so all the instruments sound like 8-bit versions of themselves and bring to mind Mario dancing over the notes. Plus there's an annoying loading screen that tries to get you to click on the "Order Guitar Pro" button instead of the "continue" button. And why the fuck is a continue button necessary??? I fucking double clicked the thing to open it! How could that have been by accident?

Naturally, today happened to be day 16 of my 15-day free trial (why the hell would I want this shitty demo any longer anyway . . . ) and so I couldn't access the Guitar Pro tab I found via 911tabs.

Fuck.

So at this point I thank God, Vishnu, Xenu, Tim Berners-Lee and Al Gore for the Internet and it's beautiful godchild, torrent sites. On www.funkytorrents.com, my favorite private tracker, I found the COMPLETE version of Guitar Pro 5, ready to be downloaded and pirated. God Bless the guy who pirated it - he even made a readme and CD Key hacker.

314 Megabytes and 45 anxious minutes later, I open the completed torrent. Angels are singing, golden light emanating from my computer. There it is - the whole program on an iso file, and the read-me. I open the read-me first.

It says plainly, "install notes":
1. Burn or Mount with Power ISO.

WTF is Power ISO???? Apparently the ISO file that the program has to be converted from needs this plugin in order to have Windows unzip it properly (I tried double-clicking it and my computer wanted to burn it to a CD but couldn't do anything else with it). Damn it.

45 or so more seconds of searching on Funky Torrents found me "UltraISO". By Jesus, there's even knockoff apps for pirating files. My spine tingles.

3.27 megabytes being downloaded quickly by my comp, I was ready to rock and roll, it seemed. First, I needed to install UltraISO, though. I opened the window and was greeted by my file equivalent of an arch-enemy - a RAR file.

RAR files, like ISO files, are of a format that Windows cannot natively do anything with other than compress or burn. They need a program called WinRAR (or one of its derivatives) in order to "unzip" them and make the uncompressed files visible to and usable by Windows.

Goddamn it.

Guess what I did next (say "went onto Funky Torrents", kids!) and found a beautiful (and I mean beautiful) version of WinRAR with the double superlatives "Final" and "Corporate". To make this even more amazing, it came with the following information: "Executable. No extraction, no serial and no activation required."

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

After a brief downloading period, I open up WinRAR and find it good as advertised. The program advises me it is "not free software" (at which I cackle, evilly) before opening. Backtracking, I open up the UltraISO program window and extract it with the click of a button. Magnifique. It exclaims before opening "Register Now! Only U.S.$29.95!" Usually when you see "U.S." before a dollar sign indicating a price, it means the place that wants your payment is either really sketchy or very professional (as in the case of PayPal). I think I'll skip the registration fee here so I don't fund terrorism any more than I already do at the gas pump.

Now I can finally open GuitarPro!!!!! Sort of. First I extracted the the files using UltraISO, which created a directory for them called "My ISO Files". I opened the setup, it did its thing, and then came the moment of truth . . .

Finger quivering, I double-clicked on the sacred Guitar Pro icon. Oh God. It opened and . . . an authentication screen came up, asking for a serial # and user ID. My initial instict was to scream and jump out my window, but then I remembered that the handy dandy readme had a procedure for opening this document.

Ok, let's see, did step one already . . .
2. Install it.
Alright, done with that . . .
3. Use key below to register
BINGO! I nervously entered the given serial # and user ID. Can someone requeue the angels?
Actually, I didn't need them, because the sweet sound of synthesized guitar came out of my speakers playing the demo.

So, two hours, much frustration and anticipation, a bunch of blogging, dinner, and $10 in electricity later, I was able to successfully pirate Guitar Pro, a $59 program.

Moral of this story: my time isn't worth very much.

Fire and Brimstone

2008-05-28T18:37:00.003-04:00

What's up, blog faithful?

I just wanted to make sure everyone was aware of the televised excellence in Detroit sports that is occurred last week a couple times. For the first time in like three years, the Red Wings are in the Stanley Cup finals, and for the first time in one year, the Pistons were in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

But what makes this noteworthy/extremely frustrating for those without Picture-in-Picture features is the fact that both teams had games on the same day.

At the same time. Twice.

Now come on. You cannot tell me that the NHL and NBA commishes were unaware of the scheduling conflict. Do they really want to divide their audience in half by forcing people to choose between Detroit's two most beloved teams? I think they taught these sort of things in Business 101.

Either way, it leaves me quite exasperated. And it also creates other issues. For instance, if there's something intense going on in both games (for instance, the Red Wings are on a Power Play and the Pistons are tied with the Celtics) the "last channel" button becomes incredibly useful. This eliminates time-wasting searching through the Amazon of hi-def channels (they just HAD to put them in the 400s to make them that much harder to remember) or even worse, the utilization of the "guide" button, which take an agonizing 2 or 3 seconds to load.

Now for people born after 1970 or so, using the "last channel" button is not a problem. Unfortunately, both of my parents find the concept mind-boggling. This means that if they get a hold of the remote, I'm guaranteed to miss at least one or two exciting moments in both games. It's like they're stuck in UHF, and I'm in the present. It's a miracle that they don't get up every time they want to change the channel.

But now of course, the Pistons are out and now the Detroit fans have a conflict no more. I guess it's a Pyrrhic victory; it still lowers my blood pressure by about 30 points around game time.

In "other" areas, the hurricane season has officially started. As usual, I'm extremely excited. Predictions this year are some kind of "probability" metric that leaves me satisfied as a hardcore hurricane tracker yet underwhelmed as an actual citizen. Did my insurance company hear that there is a 69% chance a hurricane will make landfall in Florida? Truth be told, they probably knew it before NOAA did.

One last thing. Remember that "best of 2007" albums list that never got posted? Well, that was because my hard drive crashed and it's taken me until now (8 weeks later if you're counting) to recover everything. So that means there will be lists. Very soon.
In the meantime, I recommend you do what I'm doing: sit back, watch some French Open and Detroit sports (Red Wings tonight @ 8 PM, don't miss it) and listen to some music.

A Letter to the 44th President of the United States

2008-05-25T23:00:00.002-04:00

Dear Mr. or Mrs. President -

I am an 18-year-old unemployed teenager with not even a high school diploma to show for myself. For God's sakes, I only even registered to vote a week ago. Like most teenagers, and most people in general, however, I have a bit of an ego. From time to time, I like to stroke it by telling myself that I actually know what to do about America's current foreign affairs situation. Sometimes I like to put myself in the President's shoes and ask myself all the questions about policy that I think I can answer.
Like everyone else, too, my opinion is worth about .8333 cents (assuming opinions are running about a dime a dozen on the open market these days) and I therefore do not expect you, or anyone else for that matter, to listen to me. However, my ego is feeling a bit flat right now, with me being grounded by my parents and all right now, and I therefore want lay this little bit of thinking I did a couple days ago out on the ol' interweb to pump it up.
I call this essay "Unpartisan".

Un-.

A prefix with so many uses and connotations that it makes itself stand above even those other beloved affixes, such as anti-, -less, and mega-.

Un- is possibly the most American, or at least the most applicable to America, of all the English prefixes, even more so than mega- used to be. We are today a country unsure of itself, unsatisfied with its place in the world. We feel unsecure at our borders and airports despite having a massive military budget - one that dwarfs any other in the world. We argue with uncertainty when we talk about what direction we should take as we step forward into the 21st century.

Gone are the days when optimism and good-feeling run about the world. Un-American thought and sentiment runs high, because the world is tired of our quasi-imperialist meddling in other countries' politics. Yet at the same time, the world is undecided about what role the US should play; even as we torture and detain people in unlawful prisons and wage unpopular international conflicts, we still have the world's biggest economy and the best resources to help out a country in need. We always bring a lot of pressure to any bargaining table.

Now, domestically, the situation is changing. With the rise of formerly third-world countries such as China and India into the first world, Americans are also uncertain as to our place in the sun. Do we sit back and watch them take influence and rise unchallenged? Or do we fight them and cause the world more ripples of conflict and unease?

Rising concern over energy prices and undesirable environmental effects are coming to the forefront as well. Already responsible for one recession, energy prices keep skyrocketing in an unending cycle of panic and concern followed by minimal action. We have yet to sign the Kyoto Protocol and yet we chastize other countries for their environmental unawareness.

Eventually, though, I hope unrest will cause a cooling of hotheads and war hawks at home as we realize the 21st century is the most crucial century in the history of the planet. With untold damage being possibly unreversibly done every day to the environment, it will not take long for crisis mode to kick in and people in the right places to see this is not a false alarm. As the world nears its human carrying capacity, unimaginably high death tolls will result from natural and social disasters if the necessary measures are not taken to upgrade infrastructure and social services in the world's poorest places, especially Africa. And with nukes a dime a dozen on the world market, it is becoming more and more important every day that America work toward stabilizing the unstabilized, feeding the unfed, curing the unwell.

It's time for America to undergo a paradigm shift - we need a change in mindset from provoking to unprovoked, offense to defense, against to for, cure to prevention. It is only with American help and proper actions that the world's future can go from uncertain to unlimited.

Thanks for your time. (Note to any Presidential candiates thinking of reading this on the campaign trail: you might want to say "God Bless AMERICAAA!" here.)

This is inspiring

2008-05-18T23:06:00.002-04:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy

Go to that web page.

http://www.banksy.co.uk/

And that one.

I think Joe AKA Oprah will be the American version of this guy in 10 years. They both are rather "individual".
No pun or hurt feelings intended.

Radiohead

2008-05-11T19:57:00.002-04:00

I'm going to come out and say that I think The Bends is Radiohead's best album.
By far.

Response to Joe's Individualism post

2008-05-01T20:55:00.002-04:00

I think you waaaaaay over-analyzed the "most individual" notable. You have to understand that most people aren't amateur phiolsophers like you and therefore don't grasp the meaning of "individual" in the same way that you do. Most people in voting for senior notable would vote the same person "most different" or "most unique" as they would "most individual".

For reference that this tag was not intended in ill humor, I ask you to watch the commercial for that retirement firm that's been airing lately. In it, they show a guy, and they list a large number of people that share his age and demographic. Then they keep listing details about him until it gets down to about the fourth or fifth detail about him, at which point he is the only person left. The point being, of course, that we are all individuals at some level. Being individual does not entail being selfish or atheistic in this context, only that others view you as being someone who does not "follow the crowd", so to speak.

I think you should stop reading so much philosophy. Didn't TOK teach you anything? Philsosophy is basically one person telling you their beliefs, which are inevitably going to be different from yours, as (more than likely) this person's philosophy states. So I think you should strive to find your OWN truth rather than let someone else tell you what "individual" means. After all, Communism works on paper, but in practice it is quite untenable. So it is with much philosophy.

(By the way, who was more individual than Jesus? And he wasn't exactly atheistic . . . )

Individualism

2008-04-24T23:54:00.001-04:00

While it may seem innocent to refer to somebody as individual, that may only be true for somebody who has never considered what individualism actually is. The following essay was written as a response to Riverview High School’s awarding of a “most individual” senior notable.

Individualism, in its purest and most radical form, consists of a small set of almost unattainable criterions. Based on the religion and philosophy of the individual in question, a few of these criteria may actually be virtually impossible to achieve during time spent alive on Earth. While it is necessary to note that the existence of individualism has the potential to be as controversial as the existence of God, it would also be important to mention the fact that if all useless arguments were abandoned, belief itself would cease to be. Individualism, as will be defined here, is a belief and a concept, and by no means an assembly-line definition in the typical sense of that word. The following may seem to be ridiculous and unreasonable, but it can also be said that an essay on boredom would be rather boring.

First and foremost, no one that is able to read this essay fits this essay’s definition of a true individual. This, of course, is due to the fact that the first criterion is a complete lack of outside influence. Learning the English language from anyone would be quite a significant influence. Of course, there is the possibility of a human being inventing the English language completely on his or her own, but even then that person would find other influence. From birth, human beings are influenced by their mothers’ care and support. While the point could be argued that not all human beings have to be cared for when they’re born, the relevance of that argument would need to be questioned by the fact that the baby wouldn’t live for more than a few days in complete natural freedom. Even in nature, a baby would be influenced by its surroundings before it met its inevitably close death. A baby subjected immediately to confined solitude would die of a lack of affection and contact (as has been proven, unfortunately). Certainly, a person can try to avoid unnecessary and excessive influence, in order to achieve some bastardized and incomplete form of individuality, but that isn’t the subject of this essay. This essay is on being more individual than the rest: most individual.

Also, an individual that is truly independent and free must be completely and utterly selfish. While certain philosophers (notably Rand) praise selfishness as a virtue (to an extent), not even the most selfish of popular philosophers would condone complete and total selfishness. This selfishness would mean no sense of family, love, friendship, or religion. While some extreme radicals (and everyone’s least favorite ex-lover, according to them) may still exhibit this selfishness required to be completely individual, it would take such a strong initial impulse (outside influence) or slow gradual change (longer than a lifespan) that it would render them non-individual. This is an appropriate time to mention the fact that selfishness is indeed godlessness in most popular and unpopular religions. To be completely selfish is to not only refuse to worship any kind of outside idol god, but to also deny the existence of any internally housed god.

The closest thing to complete individualism, or, the most individual a human being can possibly be, would come from a complete lack of dread. Reading any Kierkegaard will reveal that this also would mean being atheistic; however, only an anomaly would be able to eradicate this feeling from their life. A complete lack of dread would also have to mean total fearlessness, due to the fact that dread is the fear that freedom is supposed to instill upon the free person in question. With as much freedom as somebody incredibly individual would desire, the dread would overwhelm and paralyze that individual. So, with the amount of freedom an individual would want, the amount of dread that would come attached rules out the idea that an individual would be able to experience dread at all. A complete lack of dread would mean being able to put the barrel of a loaded gun inside one’s own mouth, without ever being afraid of the fact that they have the unalienable freedom and choice to pull the trigger any time they so choose to. To an extent, it could be argued that an individual could have already made (or at least planned for) every decision like this one, leading to the conclusion that his or her entire free life has already been lived, and that no single surprising situation would open the floodgates and release dread into his or her life. This concept in itself would be enough to scare most people, because fear would surely frighten anyone who has never felt it before. After all of this, it can be assumed that not even this person would ever be able to exist.

So, where is the line drawn? When does a form of individualism become possible? It seems as if the more radical the concept of individualism is, the less likely that anyone can be that individual. With this, the conclusion can be formed that individualism in others is often just the nicer name given to disbelief in their beliefs. To call somebody more individual than anyone else is to say that they are less likely to have non-conflicting beliefs than anyone else. Calling anyone who has ever given thought to the idea of individualism, an individual, should be assumedly insulting and offensive. Even worse would be calling a theistic, loving, selfless person an individual. Different can be fun. Unique can be fresh and cool. Individual, on the other hand, is a rather weighty word to be throwing around at high school seniors. A suggestion: change the oddball notable title to something a little less controversial in the future. Better yet: stop trying to tell people what they are.

Fortress

2008-04-09T20:49:00.003-04:00

Maybe I fell in love with this album when "like suicide, like suicide" in "Palms Read" is wailed over an instrumental ensemble that communicates any emotions or message that Protest the Hero choose to lay over it with vocals, but in this example perfectly enfuses the listener with angst.

Or maybe it was when I heard "Wretch" in its entirety for the first time and got lost in its intricate web of riffs, rhythms, and guitar effects that change up and mix themselves around like aces in a deck of cards, but are somehow always found in the chaos and pulled out without error or hesitation in exactly the right order in the manner of a street magician.

Maybe it was when the piano solo at the end of "Spoils" came on and I realized that this band could pull off multiple genres while retaining their emotionally charged touch that gives every song on Fortress its incredible quality.

Maybe it was when I realized that every time I listened to this album it always imbued me with a hopeful, optimistic mood despite its moody, often tense and violent lyrics.

Maybe it was when I realized that when I listened to certain particularly evocative passages of songs, my thoughts turn to someone I hold particularly close in my heart. My feelings are perfectly matched by the angst-filled lyrics due to a certain ambiguity and reticence I feel in the relationship I have with this person. But its hard to not to think my anxious mood is merely love when Rody Walker belts out "she is the dusk, she is the dawn, she is the moon, she is the stars" amidst a soaring background, followed up by a otherwordly solo and then a dizzying barrage of guitar that makes what little of brain still thinking sensibly completely melt. And then, as if to pull me back to Earth, rebuking me for dreaming while everything is getting away from me, he screams "SHE IS HERE, SHE IS GONE!". Against some fading guitar tones, he repeats, as if only to me, in a whisper: she is gone.

Yeah, I'm about 10 listens in, and Fortress blows away anything else I have heard in 2008, any other metal album I have ever heard, and as each song flies by me again, it climbs up my top 20 album alltime ranking spot by spot.

If you have not heard this album, hear it, as soon as possible. You will probably not be blown away on first listen - there is simply too much to take in, as some songs have 15-20 separate riffs and musical themes in their 3-5 minutes. Don't be turned off by the occasional death-metalish growled vocal or shrieked high note. Don't be intimidated by Dragonforce-esque soloes that are mind-numbingly fast yet retain their musical qualities and tonal vlaue listen after listen, gaining luster and coherence with each successive play.

And, because this is at its heart a metal album, even if it strays frequently from "metal" with its forays into subtle horn and string sections as well as piano soloes and dramatic pauses, do not be afraid to crank this thing's volume until the riffs bleed out into you and you meld with the tones and make them your own. Yeah, I get a little poetic and indulgent in language when talking about this album.

And a little damp in the underwear as well.

Rating: 9.5

I'm Back!!!

2008-04-04T20:58:00.001-04:00

Yeah, you'd never know it (considering a two-week gap is the norm around here between posts anymore) but I was actually gone for a reason.

Why did I fail to inform you before I left, dear reader? Because I did not know I would be leaving.

My computer completely crashed about a week and a half ago, not long after I wrote the last post. Every time I started it up, the thing would get as far as my desktop and then hit a blue screen of death like an Indy Car driver hitting a wall.

So $250, four trips to Best Buy, two new hard drives,~8 hours on the phone with tech support, and a mound of Windows Installation disks later, I'm back in business. I would tell the whole story, because it is quite entertaining, but it is so long, and I am so longwinded, that I think typing it in full would test my fingers' endurance to type, the keyboard's endurance to sustain repeated hammering, and your patience to continue reading. So I'll leave it to your imagination.

In other news, I officially committed to UF two days ago. I somehow got into their honors program (they probably mistakenly thought I was a minority or something), which was my "reach", so I really don't think I can hope to aspire any higher than that. It was a bittersweet decision, since most of my good friends are going to other schools (mostly UCF) or are going to UF but not into the honors program.

I got into a really thought-provoking discussion with my friend last night that is related to that bittersweetness I just mentioned. We were sitting at around midnight on folding chairs in a Wendy's parking lot (don't worry, this is as random/sketchy as it gets) talking about life. My friend knows exactly what he wants to do with his life - he wants to go to medical school and become a doctor. I have no fucking clue what I want to do.

No, scratch that, I told him. I know what I want to do, but I fear it is unrealistic/unattainable. It has always been my dream to be a professional musician or a writer. But first a musician, because the art of music has more mysticism and lure to me than the more straightforward efforts of poets and novelists.

He brings up Problem #1: I have little "musical ability." This is what all my musician friends tell me. I'm not in my school's band. I've never played or been trained on any instrument. The only experience I have with any instruments is from a recorder that I played in like 2nd grade and a guitar that my parents bought me for Christmas, and that I've played maybe 10 times since. My prowess on the guitar is limited to playing 3 or 4 riffs that I made up, the intro riffs to "Smoke on the Water" and "Iron Man", the slow middle part to "Sludgefeast" by Dinosaur Jr., and the bass line to "The National Anthem" by Radiohead (which I can sustain for about 1 or 2 minutes before falling out of time).

And then Problem #2: Parental support. My parents are the type of people that tell me that they will support me in whatever I do as long as it makes me happy(*******). Notice all the asterisks? Yeah. That statement has more fine print than a used car contract. They would just as soon see their hardworking, straight-edge son dive into the seedy, druggy world of hippy musicians about as soon as the private schools that they've paid for for me to attend over the years will refund them their money because I didn't get into an Ivy League grad school. For God's sakes, my father claims to not even like music. I weep.

This is the point in the conversation where he kind of sits there with a satisfied look on his face as if to say, "now I've talked some sense into you." So then I rebut.

Solution #1: I write my own songs by the truckload, and I think they're damn good. By my count, I have between 30-40 songs written out in a notebook (by "written out", I mean lyrics, because once I read the lyrics then I remember what the rhythm is and what the song's supposed to sound like). Plus, I have about 10-20 raps or rap fragments, another dozen or so poems, and the occasional short story or start of a novel. Some of these songs, in my opinion, are some of the best songs I've ever heard. I would be confident performing these in front of large groups of people (well, the really good ones, at least).

Solution #2: where there's a will, there's a way. Me getting a guitar (which I had been asking for for years and was just about to buy myself) was merely the first step in obtaining the necessary tools I need to perform my songs. Once I first got my guitar, I immeadiately watched the DVD that came with it, learned some chords, and started working out the tabs and chords to a song that had one of the easiest guitar parts. Also, I enlisted the help of another novice guitarist with more spare time than I, and in doing so thus formed my first band. We've worked out riffs to 3 or 4 different of my songs, and have one song almost completely put together. All we need is a half-decent drummer and a bassist (which we have on call but not necessarily in our "band") to make us a complete ensemble.

But just when I bring all this up, as I'm stitting there with what probably is quite a smug expression on my face, my friend brings me back down to Earth.

Issue #1: my second guitarist and bassist are going to different colleges than I, which in effect means we're going to be forced to break up. Plus one of them is going to summer classes at his college, which means we won't even have the summer to jam as a whole.

Issue #2: time. Until at least the third week in May, I'm going to be busy as fuck with exams, exam prep, tennis districts, regionals, and states (if we get that far), college registration and preview days, and whatever else comes up (prom, grad nite, etc. . . .). Over the summer, I'll have more time to write out my songs on my own, but I'll still be faced with recruiting a whole band in two months if I want to play any gigs, assuming I get the song parts mapped out and taught to the band members.

So he rests his case, and at this point, I really don't feel like arguing with him. It's become quite clear that if I really want a band to happen, let alone a music career, there's a lot of red tape to cut through.

At this point the subject moves on to something else, girls or maybe A girl; however, the above conversation sticks in my brain like fat to my dad's stomach (sorry, that was quite a low poetic blow for me to pull). I don't know what I want to do with my life, but whatever it is, I know it won't be conventional. I'm not a normal, mundane person, I've never been a normal person, and that leads me to believe I'll never be a normal person. As such, I don't ever see myself working or being happy working in a white-collar or typical professional job/atmosphere, no matter how good the pay is.

Life is a state of mind, and if I'm thinking of the moon, then goddamnit, I'm an astronaut. In America, you're supposedly able to achieve whatever you want. Maybe even a woman could be president here, or a minority could be president, whereas in other countries the both of them would end up dead for involving themselves in politics.

I don't know whether I want stability or mystery. I don't know whether I want a locked doorhandle to hold onto when things get rough, or whether I want to able to have that door suddenly swing open on me and have a black hole suck me through.

All I can tell you is this: in 10 years, I'll probably be famous or dead.

Or both.

(I realize the above sounds a bit narcissistic, but I assure you: my end goal is to make a difference in other people's lives; and at this point, I can't name any other people who have impacted my life more in certain times when I've been depressed than certain musicians and writers. If I could pay that forward by creating something that totally blows just one person's mind or otherwise makes their life better or helps them out, then my life will have been worthwhile.)

So this megapost outburst signals my return. Expect that 2007 music list up as soon as I can recover that word file with the list in it.

The perfect day

2008-03-21T22:48:00.002-04:00

I would wake up, around nine or ten AM perhaps
To find it was still dark outside
And everything and everyone was dead
But me
And the ones and things I loved.

I would eat breakfast alone, cereal and toast perhaps
And get in the shower
And the hot water would last so I could forget about time
And let the warm wet rush over me
So I could think about the ones and things I loved.

Around noon, the rain would start
Full of mystery it would tap on my windowpane
And knock on my roof
While I sat down at my computer and began to type
I would write about everything, the perfect beauty of the dark and rain perhaps
Or maybe about the ones and things I loved.

A while later, you would call
And we would talk and watch the clock hands spin round
Maybe you could come over - the conditions are kind of bad?
And then the rain would stop, and we could be together
In the company of the one we love.

Around nine or ten we could make dinner and just sit outside
And take in the silence of the commotionless world
Looking up at the sky we could see the constellations
And then comtemplating our own insignificance
Hold tightly onto the one that we loved.

Around twelve or one we could go to sleep like that
And let the shining morning rays reflecting off the water wake us
And find that we were now sequestered in our own space
Because it was someone else's turn to have their own perfect day
Away from our narcissism
And our lights
And our pollution
Yet they chose to let everyone make their own ideal, in a bit of sacrifice.

And so we just lay there
With the sun on us
I'd go inside to get us sunglasses
But then I couldn't look into your eyes
And the intensity of your gaze
Which is ten time greater than any blaze of sun
Which makes it so hard to tell you how guilty I feel
That I'm so lazy as to not get you eye protection
And so selfish as to take half of yesterday to be alone
Away from the one I loved.

But luckily for me
This too is a perfect day for both of us
So you understand all that I think and all that I feel
And yet you love me for it anyway
And the covert smile that comes to your face
Makes me realize how grateful I am
That today you made the sun come up.

Moment of revelation

2008-03-09T21:29:00.002-04:00

I was in the shower today, and thinking about things. Thinking about my life. Thinking about how I'm often busy and crammed for time when I shouldn't be - I really suck at time allocation. I was thinking about where my life was headed, and I was thinking about all sorts of things that had led me to where I was in life - what I had done, what my priorities were, things like that.

I thought over my family, and tried to compare them as best I could with other families. Of course, this a nearly impossible task - one sees only of other people's families what they want you to see, for the most part. After all, life with and in my family is the only experience I've ever really been intimate with.

I'm not usually of such deep thoughts when I'm taking my shower - after all, I'm usually a bit too occupied with making sure my balls and that annoying space behind my ears get clean to worry about more abstract matters. However, this was an unusual shower for a few reasons: I've applied to and gotten into college (I'm probably going to the University of Florida) yet instead of winding down my high school workload and starting to be a little more independent, I'm more tied down than ever. My workload is killing me (again the poor time allocation doesn't help - for instance I have ~2 hrs. of math HW left and yet here I sit typing on my blog) and my car is frequently taken away for minor transgressions.

In addition, an unusual thing happened to me yesterday. Out of the blue, my sister and brother-in-law called me, as they do every two or three weeks, at about 9:30 PM. Their message was quite clear when it came to college selection: go someplace as far away from my mom as possible, and someplace that was where I wanted to go, not someplace where my parents wanted me to go. This, luckily, was exactly what I had planned to do in the first place.

Yet, here I sat at home, being bitched at by my mother. I was grounded on a Saturday night, in my senior year. Currently, I am failing two classes and getting a D in a third. It is almost the end of the quarter and I thus have very little hope of pulling them up much. So while I often find my mom quite unreasonable, this time she had a point, even if she did not know the current extent of my poor grades.

So there I was in the shower, some time past 2 in the afternoon. What if UF revoked my admission due to poor grades, which was a very real possibilty? What if my parents stopped supporting me, as they had threatened to do, if this in fact happened? What if it was already too late to stop the decline of my grades? What if I didn't get my IB Diploma because of my laziness? After all my parents had done for me (which, as my parents frequently remind me, is quite a lot), if I ended up doing anything less than going to a stellar college with stellar grades, it would be considered a huge disappointment.

I felt myself growing more alienated as my thoughts went on. How was I going to adapt to the freedoms of college life when as it is now, I am so frequently restricted by my parents that it seems at times I live in a police state? How will my laziness and lack of work ethic be affected by an atmosphere of a bunch of other people my age living in close quarters with me, coupled with no parental influence to shoo them away when I needed to do work?

My head began to spin. I could feel my will to continue balancing on this knife edge slowly draining away, as I felt my current situation to be so undesirable as to render my life pointless. A very startling and disturbing thought came into my head: you are slipping through the cracks of society and the school system, and it is no one's fault but your own. All your four years of working your ass off and taking hard classes will mean absolutely nothing.

Out of the blue, an ambitious streak hit me. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, it said, and do something about it. Stop wasting your time and just pull decent grades for just two more months, take the exams, and YOU'RE DONE with high school. Two months - an almost incomprehensibly short amount of time when one considers that I've thus far been in high school for 43 months. Enjoy yourself these last two months - these will be experiences and friendships that you'll remember the rest of your life. And the bottom line is, if you want to succeed, you will - somehow, someway, eventually.

So, hit by this burst of inspiration, I underwent a silent revolution in mentality. For those counting, this is exactly the second time in my high school career that I have done this. The first time was when I was almost kicked out of school for various bits of disruption and mayhem that I caused sophomore year. I saved myself by attending a private meeting with my school's principal, the head of IB, my parents, and my counselor. I somehow got to stay, and I told myself then that no matter how much shit my parents and other people gave me, I was going to stay the course and graduate from IB with a full diploma, go to a nice college, and tell everyone that had wanted me gone (a myriad of teachers and administrators) to kiss my ass.

Well, now, I'm 2 months from reaching my goal, and that goal is totally attainable.

So, I've thus resolved to work my ass off in the hopes of redeeming myself and ensuring that my original idealism doesn't go to waste.

Please excuse me while I go kiss the sky.

finished!!!

2008-02-28T21:22:00.003-05:00

I don't want to be your friend.
I just want to be your lover.
No matter how it ends.
No matter how it starts.

The Best Albums of '07 list is finally done. Now I just need to find the three hours to give it a proper type-up. There very well may also be a 10-Best/worst songs list.

Check back soon.

new motto

2008-02-24T22:38:00.003-05:00

I have a new motto. It relates to the high bullshit levels I am detecting are occurring in my senior year.
(Note: do not read further if you are a college admissions director)

It is:

"So much work, so little ambition."

Note: my lack of ambition only applies to classwork I don't want to do. I have ambition for other things, like playing Halo 3 or tennis.

That is all.

2008-02-16T18:05:00.000-05:00

Dan Henry is seeing Radiohead.

OH BOY

2008-02-15T12:56:00.003-05:00

Alright, I'm pretty amped up right now. Not only are Radiohead tickets going on sale tomorrow, but the opening dates of the tour are in West Palm Beach and Tampa!!!! This means that I will be seeing them on their two freshest and most energetic dates (assuming I see them both days, I'm deinitely going to the Tampa date).

Wow. I'm REALLY amped. I need to go play some guitar and stuff to work off this nervous creative energy that I have right now. So yeah. More posting to come later.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

GODDAMN IT

2008-01-27T19:57:00.000-05:00

I JUST FINISHED TYPING A 1,500 WORD POST AND THEN BLOGGER DELETED THE WHOLE FUCKING THING AND SAID I WASN'T SIGNED IN.

FUCK YOU, BLOGGER, YOU PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#

ONE HOUR OF MY FUCKING LIFE, AN HOUR I COULD HAVE SPENT DOING A LOT OF WORK I NEED TO CATCH UP WITH.

FUCK YOU BLOGGER. GODDAMN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!~

Revisionism

2008-01-21T21:40:00.000-05:00

Did I say the top 20 list would be mostly ready by today?

Naaawwww.

Will it be ready by the weekend?

Yeeeaaaahhh.

RaeF Update

2008-01-21T19:21:00.000-05:00

The Jellyfish LP

A
1. Jellyfish Pt. I
2. Stop the Tape
3. Dorian Gray
4. Apple
5. Moment
6. Commitment
7. Constellation
8. Dreams
9. Jellyfish Pt. II
10. Exhausted
11. Outroduction

B
1. Believe (Cher)
2. Tautou (Brand New)
3. In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)

Bought/buying $200 worth of microphone/pop-filter/stand type stuff.
Finished tweaking software/recording routine.
Got Melodyne working.
Finished writing all lyrics, music written for 5/11 of the originals.
Free time scheduled at least three times weekly for vocal recording.
Got back in touch with producer.
Art finished.
Release logistics (digital vs. physical, cheap vs. costly, profit vs. reach, etc.) all figured out.
Done getting over emotional boundaries/no longer worried about hurting feelings.
May 1st finish musical recording/May 27th release.
One B-side will be released on each of three different versions of the album (3 different album covers).
$5 for 320 kbps digital copy with full color pdf lyric book. (via AIM. Only until 6/27/08)
$10 for physical copy with black/white art and link to digital lyric book.
$30 for signed physical copy with hand-colored art, all three B-sides, handwritten (albeit photocopied) lyrics, and link to digital lyric book.) [5 will be made]
Half of all profits will be donated to non-profit charities.
May 24th/ticket only/solo performance of entire album/Cost TBD/Location TBD/Crew will be needed and paid accordingly.

Any questions?

Don't Make Me a Target

2008-01-20T14:37:00.000-05:00

Well, I officially feel like a music snob now, for a couple reasons.

I saw "Cloverfield" last night with a couple friends, and I was able to name all of the songs that were playing at the apartment party in the beginning of the movie. "Seventeen Years" by Ratatat and "The Underdog" by Spoon were two that I remember in particular. It served as a great annoyment to my companions when I insisted on naming all the songs as they became audible in the background, and even sang along to "The Underdog" for a time.

In one of my math classes the other day, we were talking about good movies of 2007. My teacher mentioned how much she liked "There Will Be Blood". She asked if anyone had seen it. No one had, myself included, but I raised my hand and told her that I had the soundtrack on CD (Jonny Greenwood composed it, and anything that a Radiohead member produces is pretty much a must-buy for me). I got some stares for that statement.

My friend, who has "very high" musical compatibility with me (according to last.fm, which tracks music plays scrobbled from iTunes, Windows Media Player, and other similar media formats) recently told me that she didn't like In Rainbows. She therefore concluded she didn't like Radiohead and wrote them off as over-hyped and over-commercial (as evidenced by the myriad of IR ads that can be seen on pretty much any major internet site these days). I was so disgusted by her assertion that I took Radiohead's entire discography (minus IR and Pablo Honey) in my car and gave them to her to listen through. She was amused and highly surprised both that I owned so many Radiohead CDs and that I would take the trouble to dig them out and lend them to her all at once. I told her that this was the third time I had done that for someone this year, and I was not exaggerating.

In the realm of the album rankings, they have changed quite a bit from this time last week. There are some changes in the bottom 5, and there are a total of 19 albums rated and ranked now. Remember how last week I said there were like 2 or 3 albums I needed to listen to still? Well, I scavenged around my computer and my room and found CDs and torrents galore that I had never listened to from 2007, or that I had listened to and forgot about. So, there are SEVEN more albums that either need more listens or need to be listened to for the first time, period. That's not even counting Mothership by Led Zeppelin (which I'm not ranking because it's a greatest hits compilation, even though it's friggin awesome) or the Tonto+ single by Battles, which contains six songs plus a DVD but is still nominally a single, and therefore not eligible for my list.
Today and tomorrow are going to be music-a-rama, and I hope to have a preliminary final ranking by Monday evening, although I have no guarantees. If you want a live look at what I'm listening to, check out my last.fm profile at:
http://www.last.fm/user/danielrocks15/

Thanks to everyone who suggested an album, bought me an album, or otherwise helped this list in some way.

another update

2008-01-13T18:56:00.000-05:00

My list has turned into a big debacle. There are albums rapidly switching position on a near-hourly basis, new albums being factored in that weren't there before, and, ugh, a lot of tough choices.
I will say a bit more about my reviewing process: each album, in order to be "up for consideration" for my top-20 list, must be listened to straight through at least three times, non-consecutively. What that means is I can't put an album on repeat for three hours and then give it a score. I usually listen to a new album, listen to AT LEAST two other albums I've heard 4-5 times before to "reset", then listen to it again, repeat, then listen again. Unless, of course, I really like the album, in which case all bets are off as to how much I might play it.
I promised I'd post my top 5 or top 10, I think. Well, I lied. Here are my (so far) BOTTOM 5 of 2007:

5. "Lifeline" - Ben Harper
He has done a LOT better than this. Sounds, except the last couple songs, very uninspired. Not a horrible album, but come on, I expect better from Ben Harper.
4. "Our Love to Admire" - Interpol
Mainly I rate this album so low because this band is so overrated. Just kidding - I actually do dislike this album and its deadpan "humor". I'm not kidding about the overrated part, though. Here's a free tip: if your band's lead single is called "No I in Threesome", it may be a sign that your lyrics are attempting to make up for a lack of musical creativity (can someone call Chad Kroeger for me?)
3. "Live at Amoeba Music" - TV on the Radio
Hey, I got an idea! Let's release a live album! Let's make sure that all the songs sound exactly the same as the studio versions, and let's not perform any new songs. Oh yeah, reduce the sound quality, too. And add in some really bad banter, like, "Thanks for hanging out, you guys. Hee hee." And then, we can make people pay for it, because we're an INDIE band, which makes us more artistic and deserving of peoples' money.
2. "The Aqua EP" - Blaq Mamba
Sorry, Joe, but I really don't think you could expect any higher of a ranking. I know you understand.
1. "Supaman" - Soulja Boy
This pre-album mixtape was loaded with greats like "Make Ya Face Beat Up My Hands", "Yahhh Bitch", "Yahoo Hoes", "Yeen Crunk", "Test My Nutz", "Pimp Slap dat Hoe", "Joccin' On Yo' Bitch Ass", and my personal fave, "Doo Doo Head", with its hook "I was at this club talkin' to this bitch/when she opened up her mouth and it smelled like shit". I think rhyming "bitch" and "shit" automatically qualifies you for the #1 spot.

If there's an album you want me to review or consider for the official I Don't Care Best-of-2007 list, comment and let me know. There's still time! I'm accepting people's recommendations until January 15, though, at the latest, so hurry up.

update

2008-01-12T15:55:00.001-05:00

The count stands at 14 ranked in order now, although I'm waffling about 5 of them and consequently might have to do re-listens on some or all of those. In addition to those, I have to give re-listens to 4-6 more before I can even rank them, and then start from scratch on two others.

This post probably didn't make much sense to you, but that's because I'm using it as a sort of progress poster on my goal of getting my top 20 '07 LPs and EPs listed. It's looking increasingly unlikely that I'll get it finished this weekend, because I forgot about a couple albums (the Liars' fourth album and the new Sunset Rubdown album, namely) and I want to give all albums involved a fair shot that doesn't involve me rushing through them. I may post a preliminary list of my top 10, which will be added to later on in a week to form the complete and final list.

Yeah, I think I'll do that.

Expect another update later today, perhaps containing some things of a decidely unmusical nature.

progress

2008-01-12T01:46:00.000-05:00

9 albums ranked and sorted thus far.

I can confirm there will be a new poll soon.

Check back often.

Coming soon

2008-01-10T22:35:00.000-05:00

I will be making a list of my top 20 LPs and EPs of '07. It is coming this weekend. Each album will have a score and a rank. W00t. Stay tuned.

omg

2008-01-09T22:45:00.000-05:00

Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myselfRadiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself v v Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself Radiohead's visiting Tampa OMG I'm gonna piss myself

2008-01-09T15:47:00.001-05:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RADIOHEAD CONFIRMS NORTH AMERICAN TOUR MARKETS

With In Rainbows having debuted today at #1 on the U.S. charts, RADIOHEAD has confirmed the cities to be visited on the band's upcoming North American tour.

The tour will take place in two segments, one prior to and one following the recently announced summer tour of the UK and Europe.

The cities IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER are:

Atlanta
Boston
Charlotte
Chicago
Cleveland
Dallas
Houston
Indianapolis
Los Angeles
Miami
Montreal
New York
Philadelphia
San Diego
San Francisco
Santa Barbara
Seattle
St Louis
Tampa
Toronto
Vancouver
Washington DC

Exact dates and venues will be announced at a later date.

2008

2008-01-01T00:14:00.000-05:00

You'll no longer be kissed and kind
As you long for intuition
As you have to learn the lesson twice
You'll no longer be kissed and kind
As you long for intuition
As you have to say the password twice

Have you ever
Have you ever been all messed up?

Have you ever
Have you ever been all messed up??

Have you ever???

You're the pincard
You're the lifeguard
You're the information guide
Things look much bigger on your knees, on your knees
Miss the signal
Miss the signpost
Miss the exits to it all
And all of a sudden, you are one with the freaks.

Have you ever?
Have you ever been all messed up??
Have you ever???

Have you ever?
Have you ever been all messed up??
Have you ever???

Have you ever?
Have you ever been all messed up??
Have you ever???

Have you ever?
Have you ever been all messed up??
Have you ever???

- The Notwist, "One With the Freaks"

2007 was the most important year in my life for some of the right reasons, and some of the wrong ones. I learned a lot about things, a lot about people, the way the world works. I'll remember things that happened this year for the rest of my life. I'm not just saying these things as typical year-ending platitudes, either.

I bought Neon Golden (the album that "One With the Freaks" is on) about a year ago, as I received an iTunes gift card for Christmas last year from my sister. The album contains such a wide range of sonic texture and human emotion that no blogpost hastily scrawled while watching Dick Clark drawl could possibly do it justice. Therefore, as I began the last year with it, I've decided to end the year with it.

Happy new year, and expect more posts soon. I wish everyone health.

2007-12-27T14:32:00.001-05:00

Hey.
I just installed a new Blogger widget, which should result in a far greater number of blog postings. I know how much that excites you. Other exciting news:
-THIS Sunday, 12/30/07, is the concert. I hope as many people go as possible.
-Filming for the new Blaq Mamba music video has started.
-I'm starting to prepare my Mr. Riverview routine, and it will surely melt faces.
-I'm reviewing YHF this week.

Airband 2007 - Starring Oprah and Ely

2007-12-12T20:54:00.000-05:00

Here is the clip of blog member Oprah performing at RHS Airband 2007, as recorded by me. He is the one on the right for most of the film. He performed a medley of "Umbrella" by Rihanna and "It's Raining Men" by the Weathergirls. This is a notable mixture of compositions because those two songs are actually scientifically proven to be two of the most homo-erotic of all time.

New Blaq Mamba

2007-12-09T22:22:00.001-05:00

http://www.myspace.com/blaqmamba

Thoughts on life, love, and the things that do and do not matter

2007-12-09T22:14:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm officially an adult now. For those of you that read this blog that don't know me in real life, and for those who know me in real life but were unaware of my birthday, I turned 18 three days ago. Now that I'm an "adult", I feel confident in revealing my age on here for the first time for some reason.

My newfound adulthood has raised in me a lot of questions about what the rest of my life has in store for me. I'm no longer a child whose role it is to sit back and take in the world - I now need to shift my role to active participant. My next birthday will be celebrated in a place different than the sheltered confines of my house. For the first time in my life, in less than nine months, I will be expected to go live essentially on my own, and make the majority of my own decisions.

Quite understandably, I feel some anxiety toward this paradigm shift. After all, I still currently have a curfew that's as early as 10:00 on some nights, and I still am grounded on a regular basis for doing any of various things that displeases my parents. How am I supposed to go from a near-complete lack of control and freedom to a near-complete lack of oversight without quite a bit of turbulence or difficulty in adjustment?

I don't know what I want to do for the rest of my life, and yet I'm expected to pick a major - a decision that carries a price tag of both extra money and extra time in school away from a job if I decide to change it.

Hell, I don't even know what to do with my life now. I suppose part of adulthood is blocking out the negative influences on your life and being mature enough to make decisions that keep you headed in a positive direction. I have so many different forces pulling at me. Some of them probably exist solely in my head, which make me even more frustrated. I'm not making sense to you right now, more than likely, but this is exactly the situation.

(At this point you've probably realized that this indeed is not the long-promised post recapping my Thanksgiving break. There you would be correct. If you were to take that thought one step further and assume that I'll probably never do it, you would likely be correct there as well.)

You see, I want to get into a highly competitive and exclusive college, one in which I will be able to attend on a full-ride or mostly full-ride scholarship. This goal of mine is attainable in the form of the University of Florida's Honors College. However, I have been told that this Honors College comes with a lot of work, which is quite understandable. In IB now, I currently have an assload of work, the majority of which I don't even do. At the moment, I'm trying to scrape by, do as little work as possible, and just get B's.

It makes you think, you know? Because obviously it doesn't give me enough satisfaction to achieve on the basis of achievement alone. I've had enough awards and honor rolls and Bright Futures laid at my feet - working my ass off. And then I've been given awards for exemplary achievement and state runner-up titles and accolades and college acceptances - without even trying.

It makes you think, you know? If I've already met the requirements for the best school for which I can hope to get into without exiting college with $100k in debt, why keep beating my head against the wall for nothing?

Why continue to get grounded for staying up until midnght doing homework?

Why have my achievement or failure in a school program which I don't even enjoy continue to be the mark against which I measure myself?

Why watch friends succumb to drug addiction, other friends be led down the same path, acquaintances live and die, drink themselves out of college, become famous, pursue their dreams, fall in love, and just enjoy the hell out of life . . .

. . . without beating their heads against the wall due to their improper handling of their school workload?

It makes you think, you know? Do I need this to succeed like I want to in life? Why do I even want to go into the Honors College? To satisfy this imaginary goal of "achievement" of some sort? To laugh at all of my other friends, who suffered and cheated and died and lived and loved and shot up and shot up others, to say, HA, I stiff-armed your negative influences, and now I've won the Heisman? Where does that leave me?

Disillusioned, vaguely pissed off, vaguely stressed out, alone at the top. Kind of like how am now, except at some sort of imaginary pinnacle.

I don't want to be alone. I want to be together with others. I want to feel the camaraderie of living on a college campus with other achievers who will be positive influences on my life. I want to be part of a college campus in which the student body lives and dies and loves their sports teams and they are a part of each other, and their souls and my souls and everyone's souls connect on some level that you'll never get to by yourself, that level of supreme understanding at which you stop and go -
- wait -
- this is it -
- this is what life is about.

I want to be singular in achievement. I want to be a unique individual. I don't want to have those voices in my head. Those goddamn voices in my head that begin thinking about black and white footage of Nazi party rallies whenever a room of people are yelling a team's sports chant, doing those hand movements that look so similar to Nazi salutes that you can almost feel yourself back in the crowd in front of the podium and look there's Mr. Hitler but he's wearing a Gator sweatshirt and oh god this room is starting to spin and I have to blink and hold my eyes shut and take a deep breath in and go -
- wait -
- calm down -
- this isn't where I'll ever be.

And when both influences are there - the modern human yearning to be individual and free, and the caveman that wants to be near other people so that he can have safety in numbers in case a woolly mammoth comes - that's what I'm stuck between.

The adolescent telling me to be off, fuck you, control, I'm gonna go be a rebel if I damn well feel like being a rebel, and the adult seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, learning that all people are not out to hold you back, and that the key to success in life is learning to work within the system as my parents have always told me - that's what I'm stuck between.

Past and present. And they're both happening at the same time. Apocalypse now. Somebody PLEASE give me help I'm crying out for help help HELP!!! I've got this under control, why the hell do you always have to interfere, I'd be better off on my own.

It makes you think, you know? I want to be happy in life, but what if I don't know what will make me happy? What if my indecision is then viewed by important others as apathy? And then what if I start becoming isolated from people because they see me as someone who is going nowhere? And then what if I'm an adult, who scored in the top .5% on his SAT, who worked all his life and was always in the top classes in high school, and what if he goes to a mediocre college and gets a mediocre job and then has to work all his life because he lost himself for a couple years when he was still so young and so immature and so unworthy of true adulthood, in the most base sense?

And what if I never find what makes me happy? Or what if I know what makes me happy, but I am never in a position to do it because of those outside influences?

I'm an out-of-control, swirling hurricane. I feed on hot water and all the stuff the people's dreams are made of. I give some expectations and others headaches. On the surface, I'm organized, a near-perfect example of Mother Nature. But on the inside, I'm in turmoil, swirling winds, lightning crashing, and an eye at the center that contains an impossibly small amount of inner peace, and to where I retreat as often as possible, with all my strongest winds and most destructive forces ready to collapse in on me if my eyewall doesn't stay strong.

Maybe things aren't that bad, and maybe they're worse. Either way, I had no idea that that my 18th birthday was going to bring about in me these thoughts on the meaning of my life, or any of these other incoherent fragments of ideas.

-----------------------------------------
If you've read through this whole thing, I'd like you to comment on how you liked this post. Did you have similar thoughts on turning 18? If you're not 18, have you considered anything similar?

And what did you think of my invented semi-stream-of-conciousness style? I've never read a book where an author uses it, so I'm admittedly quite an amateur at it, but I think my writing in this post, while longwinded, somewhat pretentious and possibly repetive, was still quite good. Also note I used no spelling or grammar check and I only proofread it once. And still did this in less than an hour.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and until next time, good night, and good luck.

At his point, I'm begging you, Joe, PLEASE do the YHF review. I just listened to it twice through, and I really want to hear your opinion on it.

A novel theory

2007-12-03T18:46:00.000-05:00

You know, a thought just occurred to me.

I'm behind on work in pretty much all my classes. At that moment I have three classes in which I have a grade of a D or lower. And I'm trying to get in to an exclusive college program? Yeah right! Something needs to change!

What's the purpose of this revelation? Well, I think the purpose is that I can go on with work, finish that up, and maybe pull up my grades (in the long run) if I only learn to budget my time better (no shit). So I'm going to post here all the internet videos I've found funny in the last couple days, to get all the distraction out of my system. Tomorrow I'm going to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood, and I will enjoy that show a lot better if at the back of my mind I'm not thinking about all the BS work I have to do. So here goes . . .

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/escapefart

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/howtopoop

The top one is pure genius, but the bottom one is very funny as well. Seriously, I found the top one a kind of demented genius that someone like me would be capable of. Except more Japanese, of course. Every time I don't look at the shit on ABS for more than like a month or two, I kick myself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKwj3efLxbc&feature=related (Classroom Skit AKA Scotty)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkgMbU-we1o&feature=related (Slow Jerk)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URE7--qtHck&feature=related (Poop Meeting)

These are in order of how funny I found them. "Poop Meeting" is about a 9/10, whereas the Classroom Skit is somewhere in the 10.5-11 range. The Whitest Kids U' Know are a hilarious comedy troupe that has its own website and TV show.

Well . . .

2007-12-02T21:10:00.000-05:00

Yeah, it's been a long week.

No, I really don't have any other excuse for not updating this.

No, I can't do it now because I have some work to do, I was planning to do a big update tonight but I got distracted and thus . . .

Yes, I'm delaying the update again.

Concert update

2007-11-26T21:34:00.000-05:00

Just a wee update today, a recap of my rather eventful holiday will probably follow soon, and look for a new poll soon, too.

I will say that at least two blog members will be present at this concert, including at least one who will be performing, possibly at "top" billing.

Indulgent Blues Solo

2007-11-22T18:50:00.000-05:00

20 bars of goodness. ohmygod.

Just what the doctor ordered.

I'll Do What I Want

2007-11-16T23:35:00.000-05:00

I've been listening to the techno remix of "My Heart Will Go On (Titanic Theme)" for several hours now. Dementia and insomnia are side effects of such listen-age, but I was told that this is the only way to actually find true love. Only 98 hours to go!

Review: John Mayer - "Continuum"

2007-11-11T19:33:00.000-05:00

Title: Continuum

Artist: John Mayer

If I had to give this review a title, it would be "above-average pop singer-songwriter album effort". But you see, I didn't, because something about that title doesn't flow quite correctly. I'm not talking about how accurately it describes the album, I'm talking about how accurately the statement conveys the underlying idea.

With "Continuum", there seems to be a similar problem.

It's quite obvious Mayer has both an excellent vocal range and a propensity for guitar. Pretty much any song on this, his third album, will pay tribute to his somewhat limited, if solid vocal range; "Vultures" even shows off a pretty good falsetto. His cover of "Bold As Love" certainly demonstrates his guitar ability beyond any reasonable doubt.

He also has an ear for catchy rhythms and choruses. "Waiting on the World to Change" and "I Don't Trust Myself With Loving You", the album's opening two tracks, set the album off with some serious momentum that he never takes advantage of. Meaningful lyrics are also easy to find. "Waiting"'s lyrics border on anthemic about his generation's inaction, "Gravity" seems to deal with a fear of a young death. "Dreaming With a Broken Heart" and "I'm Gonna Find Another You" do a good, if somewhat overdramatic, job of summing the feelings of, well, a broken-hearted lover.

However, he never quite manages to put all these elements together at any one moment. A graceful piano line drops in after an especially awkward chorus on "Stop This Train", for example. It's apparent that Mayer has huge potential, but he too often focuses on the "pop" aspects of his songs at the expense of replayability. He goes for the anthemic, catchy choruses and the catchy, clever guitar line at any opportunity. This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it makes for monotonous listening, and most songs are fairly closely held within the standard singer-songwriter range: mid-tempo ballads/narratives with piano, a soft acoustic/electric guitar, and some drums mixed in there as well, with a bass line being occasionally noticeable.

John Mayer takes some risks on this album, no doubt: trying to speak for a whole generation is pretty ballsy, and the frankness with which he sings about his feelings on some songs deserves admiration. He goes out on a limb by covering a frickin' Jimi Hendrix song, but he really doesn't add much to the song or do anything special with the inevitable guitar solo. In addition, both of the John Mayer fans I've talked to recently about the album had no idea that "Bold" was even a cover. Ugh.

Next album, I'd like to see Mayer think outside the confines of the pop singer-songwriter genre a little more. Because at age 30, he can't continue to sing about wanting to be young and about past girlfriends much longer. If I were to have a conclusion to this review it would be thus: "Watch this guy, because if he thinks outside the box a little more on his next album, the results could be amazing."

And that sounds a little better, right?

Score: 7.25/10

Review update

2007-11-07T21:39:00.000-05:00

I have burned "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" (in lossless) for Joe, and I have listened to "Continuum". I will listen to "Continuum" again tomorrow and give Joe "YHF" tomorrow. Hopefully I will also post my review tomorrow as well.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003669586

In the mean time, go here. ^ Borat book = uber - lawlz.

A couple blurbs

2007-11-01T22:23:00.000-04:00

Yes, indeed, a couple blurbs, that is all I have time for on this lovely evening.

Just wanted to mention the new Saul Williams/Trent Reznor album is AMAZING. Do not hesitate to pay $5 for this: you get the album in either mp3 or lossless (your choice) in addition to a 33-page pdf file with all the lyrics and a bunch of artwork (I will admit, some of the lyrics are missing or wrong). This album is better than "The Downward Spiral". No joke. If you like rap with provocative lyrics, poetry (and this blurs the line between poetry/spoken word and "rap" in places), or anything with killer beats and rhythms to it (which is pretty much anyone), then you need to go over to www.niggytardust.com and give Mr. Williams $5 as a thanks for allowing you to experience this album's greatness. Of course, if you're a freeloader, you have the option of downloading it in 128 mp3 for free, but why do that when you could get the higher quality release for free (and when you consider how good the album is, how could you justify not throwing the man a bone?).
And yes, the album is really called "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust". And there is really a song called "Tr(n)igger". The man has balls.

Secondly, expect a full review of that album later this week. In addition, I promised Oprah (Joe) that I would listen to and review "Continuum" by John Mayer if he would do the same for "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" by Wilco. We are doing this because each album is one of the other's favorites, and we have wildly discordant musical tastes. So this could (read: will) be interesting. I have "acquired" "Continuum" and I will listen to it this weekend probably. I'm going to be busy Friday and Saturday nights, as well as much of the day Sunday, so I'm not sure when I'll have the chance to review it: probably not until next week, around Tuesday or Wednesday.

Thirdly, Daylight Saving Time is on Sunday I believe, so don't forget to get your extra hour of sleep this weekend!

Fourthly, I'd like to formally announce that I have confirmation that the Riverview High School Boys' Tennis Team coach, Mr. Bozarth, who is a playing partner and friend of mine, is retiring from both teaching and coaching, effective January 11. He has been a teacher for 38 years and feels it's time to give it up while his health is still good. You heard it here first: he has not yet informed anyone else besides me and the school board, but told me it's okay to disseminate the information.

Wow, this ended up being quite lengthy. Anyway, hope you had an enjoyable Halloween (mine consisted of corraling my dog and shutting her up every time the doorbell rang), and check back this time next week (or sooner) for those reviews, or maybe even a surprise post or two (wink).

In the news . . .

2007-10-23T16:44:00.000-04:00

Well, as Joe has already posted, OiNK is gone. This is huge. HUGE.

Above is a YouTube video which hopefully will work, full of inaccuracies and mis-statements about the site, which was free and had content uploaded by literally hundreds of thousands of people. And, of course, it was actually the fucking Jews, not the IFPI, that tipped off British authorities. Just kidding.
Here's a few more links for reckoning:
http://www.ohax.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=1&sid=5adbe25a8ac3ec448b7fe6bd3c883263 <- OiNK Memorial Forum http://oink.justgotowned.com/
http://oinkisgone.ytmnd.com/
http://oinkmemorial.blogspot.com/ <- OiNK memorial blog.

Now let me be to cry.

Today

2007-10-23T15:00:00.000-04:00

Today...October 23rd 2007...the free world has suffered the loss of something great.

OiNK is gone.

"A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while.

...

And in the streets: the children screamed,
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.
But not a word was spoken;
The church bells all were broken.
And the three men I admire most:
The father, son, and the holy ghost,
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died."

That is all. THOSE FUCKING BASTARDS. THEY TOOK IT ALL AWAY.

It's over.

Update

2007-10-21T21:38:00.000-04:00

Hey. I'm in the middle of writing up a review of the new Say Anything album. Expect it here on release day (Tuesday). Until then, check this out...I want to start posting real-time leak updates on here..so as soon as I start downloading a new leak, people can start searching for it. I will NOT send anyone media.

To start off,
Saves The Day - Under The Boards
...just leaked

Happy hunting.

Interesting BSOD

2007-10-21T12:34:00.000-04:00

So, this morning, I was going to settle in to do some homework. I started up "Stuck Between Stations" by The Hold Steady in iTunes, and heard the familiar sound of the song's treble coming from my right, and it was extremely tinny and quiet. Then I realized my headphones were still in from listening last night. I paused iTunes and unplugged my headphones.

This caused a massive and instantaneous crash to occur that sent me to a Blue Screen of Death and highly amused me.

My computer is four years old, with a rather outdated RAM amount of only 512 MB. This causes it to run slow both at startup and if I have more than 5 programs open (McAfee, Spy Sweeper, Comcast Desktop Doctor, Kodak EasyShare Updater, and Internet Explorer together will do the trick, and all but the last one open at startup).

Here's the video, which I was going to post on Metacafe, but it doesn't seem like it accepted my video or something.

In sports, the Lions somehow won AGAIN to go up to 4-2. Of course, they beat Tampa Bay, which is not exactly a Herculean feat.

Michigan, however, was rewarded for their impressive win over Illinois with a 6-spot jump in rankings to #19. They remain, along with #1 Ohio State, the only undefeated team in Big Ten conference play, with 4 wins. Next week they play a tune-up over a really bad Minnesota team before a game at Michigan State, which proved itself to be dangerous this week when they ran off 17 unaswered points against Ohio State.

That's all for now, I just basically wanted to test the video feature.

Blog changes

2007-10-20T22:36:00.000-04:00

As longtime readers (all five of you) may be able to tell, I finally used Blogger's new template formatting tools to change up the look of the blog during halftime and the third quarter commercials of the Michigan-Illinois game.

New things I've added/changed:

Ryan is gone. After over four months of inactivity, I talked to him and he told me I could remove him if I wanted. Well, I was going to anyway, and so I did. When he posted, it was usually good stuff, he had some valuable contributions in sports back in '06 and the beginning of '07. He probably won't be missed, though. Sorry.
Also on notice is Jeff, after not posting for nearly three months. He has two other blogs he's involved with, I know, but COME ON! I'll give him another couple weeks to come up with something.
Added a poll. I'll try to change it up weekly, although my guarantees of future action on this blog only happen about 1 in every 3 times (I did follow through on my promise of a Radiohead review).
Some links are gone, others are making a first appearance. See if you can tell new from old.
There is a post subscription feature at this bottom of this page, if you want to know ASAP when new content hits.

A word of info on future posts is this: expect more multimedia, especially original stuff. Blogger has revamped the picture and video posting formats so that all you have to do is just click a button to upload pics like the Radiohead cover art in the previous post. Before, you had to open another program and get it to download your pics from a folder on your computer, then use that program to upload it in a separate post. Of course, if your picture source was a website, then you could just edit the post HTML to get it to display, but needless to say, that was beyond my abilities.

In the Michigan game, Henne is back in, it's 17-17, and the fourth quarter is four minutes old. Looks like something else is drawing away my attention.

Hope you enjoy the changes, give me some feedback on other things I could add or take out.

And GO BLUE!!!!

Review: Radiohead - "In Rainbows"

2007-10-20T15:44:00.000-04:00

Title: In Rainbows

Artist: Radiohead

So I'm listening to "In Rainbows", trying to put a score to it, and I'm completely befuddled. For help, I listen to their entire discography (over the course of two days) - it doesn't help a bit. Because, if you're going to write a review, you better attach a score to it, or else no one will read it (giant pictures also help) - the only reason people read reviews is because they like to go online after they've already bought the album and laugh and scream and throw bitter words at the reviews they disagree with. You can't throw stones at a scoreless review, after all. (/cynicism)

Indeed, IR is a very hard album to pin down. In being shifty, in pulls various aspects of its ephemerality from some of Radiohead's past work: "Kid A" seems comparable in the sense that it is also difficult to grasp in the first five or so listens. Yet the essence of the album is not that it is "difficult", but that it is difficult to love or hate this album, for a couple reasons.

Admittedly, it is a bit unfair to always compare a great artist like Radiohead's new work to their old stuff. Each piece should stand separately, blah blah blah. But I can't help but think that this album wouldn't see a 89 on Metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/radiohead/inrainbows) if it were by another band. In this sense, Radiohead's past achievements are both hindrance and aid: no critic can possibly get away with panning a Radiohead album since "Kid A" went over the head of a couple reviewers back in 2000.

What necessitates all this talk from me of shiftiness and use of past works for context is the fact that there is nothing on "In Rainbows" that jumps out at you. A song might quicken unexpectedly, the killer bass line on "Bodysnatchers" gets lost by 1/2 the way through the song. The lyrics are alternatingly of the anthemic "Kid A" vein and of the paranoid and idealistic "OK Computer" - when they're actually discernable.

This isn't an album you will sing along to, and the rhythms are often too complex and variegated to really allow to groove with the song. The crunching rhythm at the beginning of "15 Step" runs into its vocal line and other percussion like a bad cross-breeze in its choppy 5/4 jaunt. So, perhaps it's too subtle for its own good, at least in this case. Because Radiohead do not have to be subtle to be really good, this reflects negatively on the album ,and is where their past greatness really influences my review: even on their most inaccessible "Kid A" and "Amnesiac" albums, there are still songs that reach out and grab you.

So what is this album's place? "The Bends" was a showcase of their mastery of conventional rock, "OK Computer" showed their ability to write a complete, self-contained latter-day rock opera with the lyrics to complement their music. "Kid A" was their great experiment, a rejection of all the concrete aspects of their previous works -and "Amnesiac" was the completion of their reinvention from a rock band to something less definable - a unique entity. "Hail to the Thief" was a complete rebuke to the previous two albums, in which they retained a few electronic aspects only to show of their excellent pure songwriting ability.
"In Rainbows" is the most calm and calculating of their albums - no whine of guitars to be found here, just rhythms interlaced to paint a picture of a more mature and experienced band.

Overall, there is no doubt that this album contains some great material, but there is nothing really transcendant. It is this final reason that the album proves so elusive, as there is nothing to remember it by but the odd long note that Thom Yorke holds or maybe a particular rhythm combo that proved appealing. I could name a song or two off each album that proved more enduring than another on that same album ("Paranoid Android" and "Karma Police" more than "Cimbing Up the Walls" off "OK Computer", "Morning Bell" and "Idioteque" more than "Treefingers" off of "Kid A", for example). But I see no such thing here. "In Rainbows" contains methodical, layered consistency for 43 minutes.

Score: 8.3/10

A laugh, a cry, and a blurb or two

2007-10-17T20:53:00.000-04:00

First, the laugh.
Well, for all you people that are complete music snobs (meaning you like Radiohead), please visit this Australian bit of wisdom. Please take 30 seconds to read this blather of a blog post (which disgusts me both as a music fan and as a blogger, with idiots like these tarnishing the good name of bloggers like me everywhere) before reading my comment.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22603035-5007146,00.html

Here is the comment I left.

"I discovered Radiohead around 2004. I have legally purchased every single one of their albums. This latest was no exception, which I paid 2.50 pounds for (I'm going to buy the CD version, as well). Obviously, Kathy, I'm one of the .1% of people that don't just pretend to like Radiohead, or else I wouldn't be wasting my time on some Australian website lambasting your worthless blog entry. And, just to clarify, some people actually appreciate subtleties in music enough to buy nice headphones/speaker systems as well - where one can quite easily tell the difference between a 160 mp3 and a lossless CD file. I guess you could call me a music snob, especially considering the rudeness I've used when responding to you. But just because you don't understand what's happening in Radiohead's music, don't immediately seek to stereotype all those whom don't agree with you. I will agree with you on aspect, though: iPod earbuds suck."

I'll refrain from further statement on any one of the false/unsupportable claims that fine blogger makes and move on to the next.

The cry comes from the two powerful movies I've watched tonight: "Crash" and "American History X". Whatever blurb of a review I could do during commercials (I'm currently watching "X", it's almost over) cannot possibly do the movies justice. Check out when they will be each next airing, both are showing again on FX at least once within the week. Catch them at all costs, or DVR them. You will not be disappointed.
http://www.tvguide.com/detail/movie.aspx?tvobjectid=133055&more=ucshowairings
http://www.tvguide.com/detail/movie.aspx?tvobjectid=137946&more=ucshowairings

Well, whatever I was going to say for the blurb is forgotten, after being engrossed thoroughly with "X". A full review of "In Rainbows" is coming, as soon as tomorrow.

So where have I been?

2007-10-13T13:21:00.000-04:00

Listening to the new Radiohead album, of course. Of course, there are other explanations for this latest huge post gap, the least of which being the fact that I had no Internet access for 3 days. Then there's Radiohead (I'm on my 5th play of it currently, not bad considering it's been out only 3 days), which I'm finding to be, as all of their albums have been, quite a "grower". Then there's the mass quantities of work that periodically deluge me. But enough of the excuses. "Content is all," that's what I say. (That's a Margaret Atwood reference, for those of you unfortunate enough not to be in a TOK class).

I WILL get around to posting a Radiohead review. I'm listening to this album, and then I'm going to start at the beginning of their discography , listen all through all 6 albums of it (probably skipping the various EPs and live records of theirs I have), then reevaluate it. Because if Radiohead have made a very good record with "In Rainbows", as I believe they have, then that needs to be evaluated against their past work, which contains anywhere from 1-5 truly GREAT albums, depending on your perspective (assuming you're not one of the people that just enjoys bashing Radiohead after listening to half of "Amnesiac" once and finding it impenetrable, as most do, in which you think all their stuff is "overrated").

In sports, of course, it's old news that the Tigers are out of the playoffs by now, but it still is a shame. They had so much potential that was ruined by the weight of huge expectations and injuries, and I believe that their many rookies fell victim to a sophomore slump.
As for the Michigan Wolverines, I believe I'm seeing a team on the rise. They're up to #30 in the AP Poll, and #35 in the Coaches' Poll. One more solid week should put them in the top 25 due to the lack of other strong teams and their undefeated conference record, despite a shaky 33-22 win last week over a much weaker Eastern Michigan team. Their opponent this week is the very competent 5-1 Purdue Biolermakers, who are better than they have been in past seasons. So far, though, Michigan looks confident, and is leading 24-7 in the 2nd quarter as I write this.

In the category of completely random, I discovered recently how to use the "1-Var Stats" function on a TI-8x series calculator. Naturally, this has already provided me with unencumbered joy many times over already. On Metacritic, I inputted all the recent music scores (yes, all 137 of them) into my L1, pressed the necessary keys ("1-Var Stats", then "L1") and got some interesting insight on Metacritic music scores (as in what truly constitutes a "good" and "bad" score), a summary of which I have posted below:
Mean score: 71.86
Standard deviation: 8.30
Median: 73
Q1 (which denotes the 25% range): 67
Q3 (the 75% range): 78
The lowest score was a 49, given to "Necessary Evil" by Deborah Harry, and the highest was an 88, given to Radiohead to "In Rainbows", although that score is likely to change, likely in the negative direction.

So while no albums fall in Metacritic's "Extreme Dislike or Disgust" category, and only 15 of the albums are even in the "Mixed or Average" category, this does not mean one should consider the rest of the albums "above average" in any way.
With a mean and median in the low 70s and a standard deviation of 8.3, this means that a truly exceptional album will have a score greater than 80. How convienient it is, then, that Metacritic already puts stars next to albums that get higher than an 80. Maybe they have this stuff worked out already . . .
So whether or not you find my statistical analysis enlightening, know that it was a worthy 30-minute diversion for me.

Alright, I have real work to do, so I depart you. Adieu. (Notice the rhyming.)

Oh my god OH MY GOD

2007-10-01T22:15:00.000-04:00

New Radiohead album!!!!!!! And how they're releasing it . . . oh my god!!!!! I'm practically hyperventilating.
Surprisingly, I didn't hear about this from the blog, but an article I just read online. I was planning to post the info here, until I read Joe had already commented on it.
I'll post the official article anyway.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071001/music_nm/radiohead_dc;_ylt=AuuZamQp9Zlmt2OoDlsJtXLLOrgF
I LOVE Radiohead.

The Smartest Band In The Business

2007-09-30T20:30:00.000-04:00

This is going to shock you.

Radiohead are the smartest band in the business right now.

They finished their album, and are releasing it via their website for download almost directly after all of the mastering was done. You can pre-order the album and receive a CD after they are all pressed and ready to be shipped (no later than December 3rd), or you can download it immediately on October 10th. How much does the download cost? You decide. They've set it up so that the price of the download is completely up to the buyer.

My hat is off to you, gentlemen.

Everyone loves an update

2007-09-26T20:04:00.001-04:00

So, I'm giving the people what they want. It's good of me, right?

Well, I got between a couple and a few things to mention, depending on how much I end up expounding on each subject. Is it just me, or does the word "expounding" look odd?

First, of course, I have to mention the biggest multimedia event of the history of modern civilization. I am talking about Halo 3, naturally.
Yes, I pre-ordered it.
Yes, I am friends with people who went to EB Games or Gamespot or Best Buy at midnight to get it "first". Yes, there are people whom I would speak to in public that played the game straight from midnight until they beat it - 17 hours later - on Legendary (the hardest setting, which is ridiculously hard for anyone but a true Halo junkie).
I did none of the above, although I did go to Best Buy at 3 PM on Tuesday (the day it came out) and pick up a copy of the Limited Edition - which comes, yes, in a metal case ("recyclable steel", it claims), with a second disk of "essentials", a hardcover book containing original artwork and two-page "briefings" on each of the Covenant character types and their homeworlds (including atmosperic content and governmental types. Interesting anecdote: the Jackals live in an "ochlocracy". That's my vocab word for the day. If you don't want to google that, then I'll tell you what it is: rule by mob. Pretty bad-ass: it's what the Roman Empire turned into when under the control of weak emperors, FYI.)
So how is the game? Let me say one thing: you will NOT be disappointed with Halo 3 if you were a fan of Halos 1 and 2. The campaign (at least what I have played through, about 20%) is much like the first two: exciting, intense, epic; except with better graphics - the graphics are SICK - as far as I can tell they utilize the 360's engine as well as any other game yet released. Naturally, it's lighting up Metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbox360/halo3) as ALL the reviewers are fawning over it. Unfortunately, due to large amounts of work, I won't be able to fully appreciate it until the weekend.

Secondly, I introduce you to this site, the simExchange: http://www.thesimexchange.com/frontpage.php. If you, like I, have interests in either economics or video games (preferably both), then you need to check this site out. Using fake money, you buy or sell stock in various video games, consoles, and even the whole market based on whether you think their sales will reach a certain level - just like the stock market. There's even futures, multi-phase IPOs, and and short-selling available for those sophisticated traders (I'm up to rank 3,182, son).

Thirdly, I feel I need to comment on the crappy news I have heard recently involving my two favorite television programs: the Tour de France, and 24.

Concering the Tour de France, I want to inform you, if you did not know this already, that last year's winner, Floyd Landis, was officially stripped of his yellow jersey last week due to the results of a long-contested trial coming down against him for alleged artificial testosterone use. Both sides used some nasty tactics (including a friend of Landis's telling the media about how former confidant and cycling champion Greg LeMond was molested as a boy, as revenge for LeMond testifying that Landis told LeMond that he had used steroids in the past), and quite frankly, while I was a firm believer in Floyd's innocence, I believe we need Floyd to accept his 2-year ban and move on with things. The era of steroids is over in cycling, and those who cheatd in the past need to take some time out and reassess their commitment.

The news regarding 24 is, admittedly, much lighter in nature. Its lead actor, Kiefer Sutherland, was arrested for about the 5th time in the last 20 years, for yet another DUI (he blew a pretty hefty .22). I feel DUIs are about the worst tickets you can get because it implies things about your character, such as the fact that you have no impulse control (why not drink some water and wait an hour) and that you are irresponsible/have poor decision making skills (there are for others near a given roadway, let's say, "dangers", inherent to one operating a 4,000 pound machine at 45 miles per hour while impaired. In addition, the fact that he is a movie star means that he should have known he blown out of proportion this would become in the media, and how he should especially watch his behavior, both after his previous arrests, and because I'm sure there are many that look up to him as a role model. Not I.

One last website you must check out: http://www.myspace.com/blaqmamba.
It's the artist myspace of a band whom I know personally. The artist may even be a member of this blog writing staff (it's not Joe). They have a new single out, called "Nuclear Oyster". Don't worry, there's no lyrics.

Turnaround

2007-09-17T22:42:00.000-04:00

So I don't have time for a whole big long 1,500 word postasaurus, and thus I'll keep it short. Basically this post will serve as a counterpost to my previous post, section by section.

First, I mention football: Michigan has at least somewhat turned things around, getting a relatively impressive win over the weakest Notre Dame team in recent memory, and moving to 1-2 (cue LOUD groan and sigh).
And also for the first time in recent memory, the Lions, yes, the DETROIT Lions, have a better record than the Wolverines at this point. And for that matter, so do the Bucs. I guess my previously posted dis helped to motivate the both of them to quite improbable 2-0s.

In the tropics, we have gone from somethings (Felix, the queefs of Gabrielle and Ingrid, and Humberto) to . . . not even an invest!
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=791&tstamp=200709 <- This post is pretty interesting by Dr. Jeff Masters about Felix and Humberto's connection to climate change, and some other stuff.

The U.S. Open Final was of course somnewhat of a letdown, because as a big Novak Djokovic fan, I was hoping he'd get at least one set. However, Federer proved why he's the greatest ever: he was able to use his knowledge and experience to his advantage over the green Djokovic. Naturally, it was still an excellent match - just not the 4 or five set epic slugfest I was hoping for.

And of course my tempting statement that I would post again soon proved to be unfounded. But hey, I never claimed I was to be tested on anything . . .

That's all for now, I hope to do a more philosphical and in-depth one soon, but as usual, no guarantees. Just go to this site:
http://www.vote756.com/marcecko/
And vote to have it blasted into orbit, like I did. Perhaps I'll even explain the very rational reasons behind my voting that way next post. Who knows.

So you think you can blog?

2007-09-02T15:48:00.001-04:00

Well, folks, it's September: the month that leaves fall, daylight time falls, temperature falls, and buildings fall (the last one only occasionally). September means, however, the RISE of two things: college football and HURRICANES! [I'm vaguely aware of something called the NFL, but considering the two teams I have lived closest to (Detroit Lions and Tampa Bay Bucs) both blow ass, I haven't investigated the sport further.]

Holding to form, Hurricane Felix is currently undergoing some rapid intensification. Not even 48 hours after Tropical Depression formation, we have a near category 4 hurricane with 125 mph winds! Granted, this storm has a snowball's chance in hell of affecting us in FL, but it will still be fascinating to watch how much stronger this thing will get. Extrapolating (which of course has no grounds scientifically) the fact that the winds went from 35 to 125 in 48 hours, this means that in two days, winds will be 205!! Yeah for wildly erroneous predictions!!!!!!
If you enjoy making predictions like I do, here's the link you need for information regarding the storm:
http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at200706.html

College football I mention on a much more morose note. As those readers who have good memories as well as those who know me personally know, I am a die-hard fan of the University of Michigan Wolverines (not die-hard enough to pay $100 for audio streams of their games, mind you). Yesterday, my beloved Wolverines lost their opening week game. Considering they were in the hunt for the national championship at #5, ANY loss before the bowl game would have been tantamount to disaster. It is impossible to put in words the disappointment and embarassment I feel after Michigan lost, 34-32, to Appalachian State, two year I-AA defending champion. I don't want to dwell on it, but for those not knowledgeable in college football: some are saying this was the biggest upset . . . in college football history.
I would like to mention one more thing, though: the complete lack of television coverage of that game. Was ESPN really not able turn away from the gripping 55-21 Michigan State vs. UAB game for five @!#$@#@ minutes???? I mean, the Michigan game was not only one of the biggest upsets of all time, but it was an exciting game! This breakdown in coverage left me, as well as several other fans relegated to frantically flipping through channels only to see yawners like Ohio State-Youngstown State and many others. ESPN should be almost as embarassed as Michigan.

Moving onto rosier subjects, we have the U.S. Open. There have been so many good matches and stories, I don't even know where to begin.
I'll start with Donald Young, the 18-year-old American. This 5'9", 145-pound kid has been on the ATP Tour for over two years - and not won a single match. Less than a month before this year's open he gets his first win -and then gets his second and third wins at a grand slam on his home turf, before losing a tough five-setter in the third round. He gives hope to all us young tennis players under 150 pounds (like myself, although I'm pushing 150 now as a result of some recent workouts).
The 2nd great American men's story was that of John Isner. A full foot taller, four years older, and 90 pounds heavier than Young, the big-serving University of Georgia grad has been on a tear this summer, winning FIVE matches in a row at a recent tune-up, the Legg Mason classic, before losing to Andy Roddick by a hair in the final. In the open, he did not disappoint, blasting through the #26 seed Jarkko Nieminen and a qualifier before falling to Roger Federer in the 3rd round - but not before taking a set off him.
Everybody's talking about the "great American women's story", that of Ahshe Rolle. I did not see any of her matches, but heard nonstop commentary on how she battled poverty and adversity and this and that, making it to the 3rd round. I would be raving over her too - but she's the #17 seed, and didn't do anything special. If anything, she underachieved.

Great individual matches include the wacky James Blake vs. Fabrice Santoro 2nd round 5-setter that lasted until nearly 1 AM Friday morning (I watched every minute, and was none worse for wear Friday morning after 5 hours of sleep). I missed my favorite player battle (I was probably ctaching up on sleep) Friday afternoon in what I've heard was an instant classic - the Novak Djokovic vs. Radek Stepanek 5-hour, 5-set marathon. On the women's side, 30-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska's stunning 3-set upset of Maria Sharpova yesterday has been the performance of the tournament that has opened up the entire bottom half of the women's draw for contention.

This U.S. Open has been one of the most fun and unpredictable I've ever seen. Please take some time to watch this week, and certainly catch the semis and finals next weekend. Coverage schedules can be found here:
http://www.usopen.org/en_US/about/tv_us.html

I would keep going, but, believe it or not, I actually have things to do. So, blog readers, have a relaxing Labor Day, and you might find another post on here pretty soon.

Blacks, feminism, geniuses, and general philosophy

2007-08-29T19:52:00.000-04:00

I'm in a somewhat angry mood. Actually, angry isn't the best way for me to describe it. More "rebellious" or "rambunctious". Guess its some random blast of testosterone or something. Either way, I like it. And, if you're a long time blog reader (all 5 of you) you'll likely rejoice at the interesting/unashamed/edgy/hilarious things that may come out of my keyboard. Sit back and absorb.

First thing I'll touch on is one of my favorite topics: political correctness. Or rather, it's one of my favorite topics to vilify. In this case, I'm going to lambaste political correctness for how it blinds our kids in school. Kids are given the day off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and educated year after year after year after year (every February/Black History Month) about how blacks are equal and thank GOD for Civil Rights and blah blah Rosa Parks.

And yet: TIME Magazine, August 2007: "For unknown reasons, African-Americans test a STANDARD DEVIATION lower than average on IQ tests". Look at "integrated" schools. Blacks from the black part of town are bussed in, they feel isolated, they stick together and become even more "black" in an effort to fit in with their neighbors. They never truly become streamlined in the system, they are allowed to fail out and still get a HS Diploma in order to show what great progress we're making, and then repeat the cycle all over again.

Yes, I know, this does not describe all black kids. And of course, there are blacks who are 100x smarter and further in society than I could ever hope to be. I'm saying this as a person who got over a 1450 on their SAT reading and math.

The point I'm making is that PEOPLE, we're lying to ourselves. Blacks WILL NEVER be equal to whites until kids are educated that differences exist. I mean, for God's sake, 150 years ago, most blacks weren't allowed to own land. Education was not allowed. This fostered an attitude of resentment that, I believe, still lies deep-seated in the hearts and minds of every ghetto. Along with this rose a culture that attempted to be everything white culture was not - because instead of allowing blacks to have their own identity, we either have completely ostracized them or told them how wonderfully integrated they are and that they are equal to whites.

This black culture that arose and evolved to the modern day, that fostered the creation of such genres as soul, rock, rap, blues and everything in between placed less value on education in favor of wealth. Because even to this day, money=respect. And for those who grew up in poverty when all around them white kids with daddies making 5 times the salaries as theirs were being told how equal everybody is, it's easy to see where value in education ended and an affinity for wealth began.

Not that I'm justifying it. I find lyrics, regardless of origin, about niggas slapping bitches and dropping Benjamins on hoes and the shininess of one's cavities disgusting. The proliferation of songs like these on American Pop charts shows how addictive this lifestyle and mindset is. No matter how much Affirmative Action you offer, you're still not helping the guy in the ghetto who grew up watching his dad (if one existed) slapping his mother around after he got home from a rundown school staffed by young and inexperienced teachers.

So, Dan, know-it-all, what does your highness suggest? I suggest we merely stop lying to ourselves and our kids about the current state of racial inequality. Racial relations, in my opinion, likely have never been better. But I think they could be even more open and beneficial if we stop letting down the poor minorities that never got a chance to have their story told. I wonder how many jail sentences, murders, gang-related incidents, and lives we could save by just more accurate education.

The second thing I would like to mention is the universal praise emanating from talking heads over the "success" of Title IX over the past 35 years. Yeah, okay, I'm male, so I"m more likely to be biased against this radical unedcated feminist legislation. If you define "success" as denying lifelong talented male athletes from a college scholarship in favor of female athletes getting scholarships for little to no talent, then Title IX was a smash.

Title IX is flawed because it inherently assumes that girls play sports with the same acumen and ardor as boys. This is a classic case of American political correctness. It took us 400 years to "reverse" discrimination against blacks in the South, so we go unnecessarily overboard and give black students places in college and top high schools over equal or superior white peers because why . . . ? They're black, and we feel guilt.

Same thing with women. It took the most enlightened country in the world 150 years to realize that women were capable of voting for President and regularly attending schools alongside males. So they're equal intellectually. That means NOTHING when it comes to athletics. Women are beaten by men at every sport I've ever heard of. This not because of some gender gap in physical education. This is because . . . womens' bodies are . . . does this sound familiar . . . DIFFERENT from mens'.

Title IX also makes no sense for other reasons. How many of you have ever attended a women's basketball game where you paid? show of hands please . . . okay, that's what I thought, one or two of you (myself included, I've probably been to about 5). Okay, how many have gone to a men's football game? . . . get my point? Title IX drags schools into a financial quagmire by forcing them to field squad after squad of scholarshipped athletes that have no hope of making money for the school.

If we lived in a truly open, democratic, capitalistic society, then neither of these problems would arise. Because it makes no financial sense to have large numbers of uneducated niggers (and I do call some blacks "niggers" because they are worthy of a pejorative name due to their deplorable behavior, just as I call antagonistic gays "faggots" and uneducated racist whites "rednecks") roaming the ghettos, society would ensure that these people become educated and productive members of society - and that "ghettos" are eliminated in favor of buildings which can more productively utilize the centrally located land's value.

My next topic is our current Adminstration and their horribly flawed view of education. In their dream world, everyone would pass the NCLB standardized tests, in the same schools, learning the same material, all across the country. The problem? Not everyone is capable of passing these tests without large amounts of extra labor and time. And as we know, time is money. And money used towards education obtained so that little Bucktooth can be a mechanic in 10 years must be inevitably taken away from the kids who will be progressing society the most: the geniuses.

Yes, I read TIME's cover story from last week and was not outraged, but forced to agree with the article: I went through years of public schools bouncing around, getting in trouble, and just generally being really bored. I always enjoyed learning, but never liked school. Even when I got into a program that supposedly was for those who were motivated and gifted (IB), I found myself in classes populated mostly by average-intellect overachievers who thrived in classes that presented me with work no more difficult - just more voluminous.

I took AP classes my sophomore, junior, and senior year. And yet, as I went through high school, my study habits got worse and worse. Of course I can't blame the school system for everything, it after all was me who chose to join the program - and stick with it. But I'm always left with a nagging taste in my mouth that tells me I should have gotten out when the getting was good and gone to the school for "gifted" kids that requires a certain IQ level or something for entry.

But enough bitching for now. There are more important things - like the two Invests currently in the Atlantic. I feel at least one of these two areas will develop in a TS or greater - and both have solid potential to hit Florida. I'm wetting my pants, as you may imagine. Obviously Dean was a TREMENDOUS disappointment, and I'm ready call this season a failure if we don't get something in September coming our way. I haven't evacuated since I moved down here nor recieved any damage. I think I'm just invincible. Okay, fine, I'm just saying those things to piss off a potential storm from trying to get me. But, storm, I'm telling you now: bring the heat, bitch.

I'm done. Comments, as always, are appreciated.

Grumble grumble blah

2007-08-14T11:16:00.000-04:00

What is there to be happy about, really? Summer as I know it (read: no school) is about to end, I still have a book or two to read and Extended Essays to fool around with, my schedule is completely screwed up - it has me scheduled for a class that I was told I couldn't take, left two classes off my schedule I must take, and just generally left me feeling like I could slap a couple of people in the face (granted, that's a feeling I've had for the last couple of years, so it's nothing new). In addition, some of my friends are going off to college.
The answer as to what there is to be happy about?
http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at200704.html
Yeah! That's right - the first meaningful storm of the season. And it couldn't be better as far as location and projected path - right at Florida. Yes, I'm well aware that it will probably turn up the East Coast, but that doesn't mean it couldn't pull a Charley and hang a loop around the Keys or pull an Andrew and bulldoze across the coast.
So why do I get so excited at the prospect of mine and other peoples' houses getting demolished? I can't explain it. I guess living in Florida during hurricane season is kind of like bungee jumping - really boring for a while (waiting in line, I guess) and then when a storm comes nearer and nearer to you - it's like jumping down farther and farther. And then if you get a direct hit - the bungee cord was a bit too long. Then you get to climb all the way up to do it all over again.
So, ignoring my gloriously horrible use of an analogy there, I have one final entertaining (for you, not me) story.
If you have read some of my recent posts, you know that I am not all a Barry Bonds fan. I think he's an arrogant, cheating shit. Nevertheless, I still became transfixed on his quest for #s 755 and 756. Every time I was at home for his games, I DVRed his at-bats, gleefully watching if he popped out or struck out, and screaming at the TV every time he was walked. If I wasn't home, I DVRed the whole game, and if I heard he didn't hit a HR, I just erased it.
On the night he hit #755, I was watching (and cringing) as he hit the home run, and over the course of the next hour, ESPN replayed it about 400000 times from every possible camera angle. The reception was decidely mixed, but considering he was on the road, surprisingly supportive. Naturally there was the contingent of people in left field with the asterisk signs, but there really wasn't a ton of booing.
On the night of #756, the really historic one, I was also at home. However, watching baseball between two average teams at 12:30 AM is not exactly the most stimulating of activities. I got his first at-bat DVRed (and deleted) and the same with his second. By the 5th inning, I was fast asleep, however.
Naturally, it's in this at-bat, the first one of the last 8 games of his that I failed to record, in which he hit #756. I awoke at around 2 AM or so to see Barry at a press conference with the description on the bottom informing me that this was the celebratory 756 press conference. At 2 AM, I've found, if you're awake, you're either having the time of your life, or you want to shoot something. I was definitely in the latter category. I angrily turned the TV off and went back to sleep.
I would comment more on the Michael Vick case, but I'll wait to do that for another post. Hold your breath.

Lollapalooza 2007 Review

2007-08-13T11:38:00.000-04:00

Hey, I'm back. I'm going to make this brief. All ratings are out of a 0/10 integer scale. Those marked with asterisks indicate performances seen from the front row/against the crowd/stage barrier.

Ghostland Observatory - 6*
(great way to start off the weekend)
Jack's Mannequin - 8*
(shitty mix, but, new song)
Electric Six - 6
(only caught a bit of their set, but, the LOL's were present)
Silversun Pickups - 6
(way better live than on album)
Satellite Party - 2*
(2 bonus points for random hot dancer girl)
Daft Punk - 10*
(there are no words. look for videos)

Sherwood - 5*
(pop-punk was dead before they were even a band)
Tapes n' Tapes - 8*
(sick jams)
Motion City Soundtrack - 7*
(seen them too many times to get excited)
The Roots - 6
(wicked ass bass solo)
Snow Patrol - 8*
(surprise! I thought they would suck)
Interpol - 9*
(there's just something about seeing Interpol at night in the rain, with the city of Chicago as the backdrop)

The Cribs - 6*
(would be better outside of festival)
Amy Winehouse - 5*
(her backup band was good)
Iggy & The Stooges - 8*
(didn't play much off of Raw Power, but, it's fucking Iggy Pop. look up videos, keyword "no fun")
Modest Mouse - 9*
(Johnny fucking Marr!)

Now, you may be saying: "but, Joe, there were like 100 some bands playing at Lolla! Why did you miss Spoon and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs? and that other band I like?"
The fact is, reader, that I saw almost every band that I went to see, and then some. Also, there were some necessary sacrifices that had to be made to accrue such a large number of asterisks! I'm not kidding around with those things. If there is an asterisk, it means it was a stage, then a barrier, then Joe leaning against said barrier, then thousands upon thousands of people leaning against Joe. How did I get so close, you ask? Easy. I always got there early, before the rest of the masses. Yeah, they may have been able to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but, no, they weren't 15 feet away from Interpol. The point is:

Lollapalooza - 10

It's what you don't see . . .

2007-08-03T18:19:00.000-04:00

The title of this post is applicable to the subject matter in two distinct ways: one somewhat intellectual and the other decidedly not so.
First of all, I direct your attention to what the radio plays nowadays. Basically, if you're a reasonable human being, you agree songs with TITLES like "I Wanna Fuck You” are utter crap.
However, for the benefit of whatever preacher’s daughter (cough, cough) may be listening to this on the air waves (and to thwart the eager slaps by the FCC) songs like these are voluminously censored.
And so the censors are once again saving America’s airwaves and from the evil clutches of vile musical imposters spewing forth an excess of foul language, right? Of course, you’re not getting the whole story. The artists that are primarily censored are in the genre of hip-hop, and are therefore, by a vast majority, black.
So, Dan, you’re implying that the record companies that self-censor the artists are racists? Well, to a certain extent I am. Certainly I won’t argue that much of the content definitely needs some censoring. While thumbing through radio stations looking for something to listen to, people shouldn’t have to be subjected to a barrage of misogynistic expletives advocating drug use if they don’t want it. (Geez, who could resist listening to something that cool??)
However, there is a lot of less overt profanity that escapes censoring by rock artists. For instance, take “Rockstar” by Nickelback. One of the most vapid songs in recent memory contains lyrics like the following:

“The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap”
“Hire eight body guards that love to beat up assholes”
“Everybody's got a drug dealer on speed dial”
“I'm gonna sing those songs/That offend the censors/Gonna pop my pills/from a Pez dispenser”

Yes, it is arguable that the singer is lampooning those that are “rockstars” in this fashion, but that wouldn’t make a whole bunch of sense coming from a guy who is, in fact, a rock star. And yes, “rock star” is in fact two words.
So what’s my point? I heard this at about 9 PM on the radio in a bowling alley, being proudly blasted over the loudspeakers. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but exposing the inevitable group of seven-year olds in a birthday party three lanes over to this isn’t exactly the most responsible thing to do.
So do I advocate adding “drug dealer” to the already lengthy list of banned phrases? Nah. But I question whether or not this song would have been played had the lyrics been rapped. What I question more than anything is the public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for any piece of music with drug and sex references - even if the music blows ass and is only suitable for “grinding” to.

For the non-intellectual part of this post, I gladly direct your attention to this web page - but not without some warning that what you will see is EXTREMELY weird and might get you excommunicated from whatever church you attend or evicted from your apartment if the wrong person looks over your shoulder. You may even begin feeling a strange pain in a certain part of your body.
http://www.bmezine.com/news/people/A20210/plp56/index.html
So what does this have to do with the title of the post? No idea - I lied. I just thought I’d post it there to back up a point I made last week in an article favoring internet anonymity. I mean, without cover, would that guy be able to “express” himself? Yeah, now I bet you really agree with me.
(Okay, maybe I didn’t post this for any other reason than the shock factor, and because I can just imagine the look on your face.)
I’m gonna curtail this post at about 1/3rd the length of last week’s for readability, but not before recommending that you watch as many of the Giants’ games as are televised. It’s extremely gratifying for a Barry Bonds hata like myself to watch an entire stadium of people booing the shit out of him every time he steps to the plate - and then fails to hit a Home Run.
That’s all for now.

If the World Destroys Itself

2007-08-01T20:53:00.000-04:00

If once the world becomes destroyed
I will be there for you
For though its been years since we talked
I've always remained true

If twice the world comes at an end
I will not turn my back
For though you might not do the same
Trust in you I don't lack

If thrice the world's thrown to its knees
I'll just have to ask why
For though I've sinned some in the past
I've never passed you by

If four times space and form stand warped
I'll meet you at the beach
For though there's blood and locusts swarmed
I'll keep you in my reach

If walking back towards our home
I reach out for your hand
You'd vanish in the sky and leave
Me drowning in the sand
----------------------------------------------
Just figured I'd throw a poem in to mix things up. Hope you enjoy my faux poetic skillz. Don't want to give the subject matter away, but I will say there might be a Biblical reference or three in there.

Going To Chicago

2007-08-01T00:24:00.000-04:00

I'm going to Chicago tomorrow for Lollapalooza.
Unless there is some sort of fatal DANCE accident, I should be back August 13th to post a full review. If, however, such an accident occurs...you should know that I died happy, and dancing.

Hope you're sitting down . . .

2007-07-29T17:06:00.000-04:00

. . . because this is going to be a loooooong, enteraining, and hopefully quite thought-provoking post.
First I want to direct your attention to this scourage of an article.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1645168,00.html
I'm assuming you don't want to read the whole article, especially considering most don't read TIME for entertainment purposes (yes, I'm a big enough nerd that I do). So I'll sum up Lev Grossman's unusually crappy viewpoint for your convienience.
Mr. Grossman feels that anonymity is a bad thing. (/summary)
Never mind that 75% of all witnesses (yes, I just made that number up) at drug and racketeering cases maintain their anonymity during testimony. Never mind that the reason half of all rapes aren't reported is more often than not public humiliation.
One of the sentences out of his article with which I have a major problem is the following one:

"As anybody who has even looked sideways at the Internet knows,
anonymity has a disastrously disinhibiting effect on human behavior."

The font size and color are of my own addition. He qualifies this statement by stating that "verbal offensiveness" follows when anonymity is allowed in forum postings and other settings. Well, here you go, Lev, I'll throw you a bone:

YOU STUPID FUCKING LIBERTY HATING JEW, I WISH THE NAZIS WOULDN'T HAVE MISSED YOUR HOOK-NOSED GRANDPARENTS' ASSES.

The sad part is, he's probably not even Jewish. And just to clarify, I have no more against the Jews than I do against the gay couple who live across the street from me - the only hate I feel toward them is their obnioxiously loud house music that blares from their house or cars whenever a door is opened.
Just as the only hate I feel toward Lev (I have lost the respect necessary to delegate him a "Mr. Grossman) is his disastrous opinion. Tell me, just what is wrong with allowing people to speak their minds without some sort of ID clearances? The Internet has allowed it for 17 years, and the last time I checked, its popularity seems to be as high as it's always been.
On the Internet, it doesn't matter if you are a 36-year-old housewife from Georgia, or a 12-year-old from the Bronx: you have an opinion, and if you can state it articulately and with some linguistic gusto, then people will listen to you, react to it, and accept your brainpower to be melded into the collective genius that is the web.
Taking away anonymity on the internet would be like asking people in real life to carry a national ID card along with them to show to the McDonald's cashier, and to wear a "Hello: my name is __________" tag on their shirts at all times. That is to say: it is gratuitous and quite inhibiting.
Oh, I'm sorry: inhibiting people is a good thing, remember. You probably wish I wouldn't have made the fake Jew-death-threat, but it made you consider Lev's side of the issue, before I just blew that side out of the water. Because, if you're still reading, then you respect my opinion enough to honor it with your time. And you didn't have to know my last name and credit card number in order to like (or dislike) my ideas.

Moving on, I must of course discuss Le Tour de France, which ended today in a spectacular fashion.
First, because this made as big of news as any during the tour, I have to comment on the scnadals. I must preface this by saying that I particularly disliked Michael Rasmussen for his arrogance (repeatedly waving his arm during one stage to get the motorbike camera farther away than was really necessary, and looking like a douchebag in the process) and the only reason I found Alexandre Vinokourov special was for the British flavoure of his name and his Kazakhstan nativity.
Vinokourov made a heroic attempt in trying to come back after his nasty crash, and I'm sure it ruined his day as much as it would have ruined mine - knowing that because the slightest technical mistake, your Tour de France might now be effectively over as a major contender. But I'm sorry - cheating is cheating, and even if you're going out for the Special Olympics (a la Cartman), the best way to earn respect is not by cheating, but by sitting back and taking the pain like a man. Just as I say to Barry Bonds - screw you.
Michael Rasmussen is a bit of a different case. He - like Bonds - has not tested positive for anything yet got expelled from both the Danish National team and the Tour just the same. Was this punishment possibly a bit harsh, in hindsight?- possibly, unless he tests positive for something at some later date. Was the timing wrong? - definitely. To sit on news that he lied to the Danish athorities about his whereabouts during key drug tests weeks before the Tour took place and wait until he was wearing le maillot jaune to act was just plain tacky on the part of the Rabobank team and brought unnecessary shame to the Tour itself and le maillot jaune - not to mention the fans and riders, who deservedly feel jipped.
And that's not even to speak of the plight of those on the same team as those who doped. As it goes in quarantine, if one's infected, they throw out the whole bunch. So if you got a knucklehead teammate who just got caught booty bumping after some lab tests, you find yourself SOL because you, my friend, are ejected as well. And good luck getting your sponsor to renew their contract after their name gets associated with "a bunch" of cheats. Kinda makes ya angry, doesn't it?

On a much more positive note, I commend the herculean effort of the Discovery Channel team to not only live up to the hype that comes with being Lance's old team, but weather the storm of controversy that has surrounded this Tour with their heads held high. Three riders in the top 8? Two on the podium? One the winner? And the winner being a shrimpy babyfaced Spaniard with the courage to slap Michael Rasmussen in the face and ride by him? Epic stuff - congratulations for giving cycling a great story to root for.

In addition, the single most exciting Tour stage I have EVER seen occured on the individual time trial of Stage 19. Imagine the drama surrounding the top three riders - one a tour rookie in first place, third place a seasoned veteran and the winner of three time trials in the last 6 months, and second place holding with a graduate degree in time trialing, with a minor in flatland riding.
Now imagine the race living up to the post-apocalyptic hype, with the top three riders doing a rare accomplishment in that they were all in the top three in most of the time trial - but not in their previous order.
http://www.versus.com/tdf/article/category/87/?tf=articlecat_video2.tpl&sm=4&amp;CatLimit=1&cc=1&ArtLimit=100&ac=1&cat=&Offset=19&mt=&CatUserDef=true&ss=video
You can catch a good portion of the time trial here - but if you're hooked up like I am, then you have a DVR with which you have the option of reliving the whole uncut stage now and for eternity.

One final rant and then I'm done. This one is directed equally at Microsoft and my friend Jeff. The reason Jeff gets implicated is because he just HAD to invoke the name of my Xbox 360 when suggesting that I would be envious of his closeness to Le Tour. He said (on his blog, which I'm not going to go out my way to link to, if you really want to visit it see my sidebar) that I would probably be pissed at my missing out on the action and would probably beat on it or something.
Well, ignorant as the suggestion may have been, it was prophetic. My 360 broke down again today, giving me the dreaded Three Red Lights. If you're counting, this will be the FOURTH time it will go in for repairs since I purchased it in December 2005. Of course, sometimes I've gotten new systems two or three of the times instead of getting the same one bandaged up and shipped back, meaning I can't be mad at this single specimen, but rather at all Xbox 360s at their general lack of reliability.
And so with less Xbox in my future, this blog may very well find itself having an increase in post frequency. Good for you, good for me (stress relief).
No guarantees, but I may try an experiment in blogging in real time a certain event in the future. Keep checking back periodically for more info.

Update: I just did a Word Count in MS Word, and this baby clocks in at ~1,500 words. Possibly my longest post ever. If you read this whole thing, I thank you for your participation in blog history.

Hey

2007-07-28T16:56:00.000-04:00

Recommend:
1. "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" - Neutral Milk Hotel 10.0
2. "The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me" - Brand New 9.2
3. "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?" - Oasis 9.0
4. "Psychocandy" - The Jesus & Mary Chain 5.0/10.0 (seriously depends on environmental shit)
5. "Human After All" - Daft Punk 8.7
6. "Direction" - The Starting Line 8.5
7. Entire Discography - Smashing Pumpkins 7.0-10.0

Do Not Recommend:
1. Bandwagon quasi-indie-yet-popular shit-rock (Most Pitchfork stuff) 0.2
2. Acoustic fag-rock (Dave Matthews) 1.0
3. Overrated cock-rock (Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, etc.) 3.14

Concerning France and other things

2007-07-12T16:50:00.000-04:00

I would like to begin this post by saying that Jeff is one lucky bastard for a couple reasons.

First of all, he is currently living one of my dreams - to be in France during Le Tour. Granted, I speak about four words of French scattered across my mind from my French preschool teacher, but it still would be amazing to be in the country at the same time as (need I say it again?) the greatest sporting spectacle in the world.
If I had the money and the time (and I would need hefty amounts of both) I would follow around the Tour on the mountain stages, picking a good spot near a big climb to watch each day. I would then follow the Tour into whatever town they stopped in for the day, sampling the wine (I'll skip the cheese, thanks) and the atmosphere, and OF COURSE blogging about it from my (non-existant) laptop via wi-fi.
I suppose I would like to follow the Tour so much because it combines so many of my interests together into one amalgam. You have the raw sporting and competitive aspect that I respect so much from the view point of a fellow athlete. You have the travel and adventure aspect of going through rural, mountainous France where the Zagat guides stop and the bottled water companies take interest for the pure streams flowing from the Alps. Finally, you have the mathematical aspect of things - the points classification vs. the hors categorie mountains vs. time bonuses and how many seconds Wim Vansevenant needs to finsh behind to be in last place (currently he's running 179th, sixth from last after five stages).

Anyway, the second reason Jeff is lucky is because he actually gets to take a nice, long summer vacation away from this stifling Florida heat (heat index currently is 113 degrees according to Weather Underground). I don't know how warm it is there (I heard today's stage temp was only in the 70s, which I don't see unless I find myself outside at 4 AM, in a breeze) but it must be cooler than here.
Either way, it would be nice to just be out of the state for once. I haven't left FLA since I moved here - over three years ago. The closest I got was Tallahassee (which was even hotter, naturally), and that doesn't even really count. It's like getting from the ninth to the third circle of hell, only to find out you still have to cross through two more.
For one thing, I and my family don't exactly have boatloads of money to spend on a vacation, and I don't exactly have boatloads of time either. However, I might be going to North Carolina for a brief excursion in a couple of weeks, I'll play it by ear with my work and see what happens. I know you, blog reader, are hoping with me for the best. Thanks. *tear*

In the "other things" categorie (this word looks much better with an "ie" ending, French style) I have to make some statements regarding musical choices, which I haven't done in months. I'll do a quick run down of some of my recent listens:

Recommend:

"Songs for the Deaf" by Queens of the Stone Age (Rating: 8.3)
"Icky Thump" by The White Stripes (Rating: 7.8)
"Sister" by Sonic Youth (Rating: 9.1)
"Person Pitch" by Panda Bear (Note: I have previously bashed this album - I eat my words. Rating: 8.5) (2nd note: thanks to the anonymous commenter who saw the typo.)
"London Calling" by The Clash (Rating: 9.0)
"I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One" by Yo La Tengo (Rating: 9.2)

Do Not Recommend:

"Neon Bible" by Arcade Fire (Note: I'm going to take some fire for this, but it's not their best work, although it does have its moments. Rating: 6.8)
"Remain in Light" by Talking Heads (Note: I'm also aware this is a favorite of many, but I'm sorry, Phish's cover was better. Rating: 4.5)
"And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out" by Yo La Tengo (Rating: 6.5)

Immolate me or applaud me as you will.

Bonjour a Paris.....

2007-07-11T15:01:00.000-04:00

Hey everybody,

I've been updating my blog from France (something I don't usually even do from my own house) and am to lazy to cross-post it here. Basically, I'm telling you to head on over to my page, read, and comment your asses off. I am ready to answer any questions about France you might have or anything else

http://jeff-shapiro.blogspot.com

pe@ce

Important matters (consider it part 3, I suppose)

2007-07-09T15:24:00.000-04:00

Well, I guess this the long-delayed part three, if in disguise. I have a couple things I really want to talk about, relegating a third chapter of excuses as to my now-filled long post gap to the burner.

First in priority is the multitude of great TV programming at our disposal this summer. We have Wimbledon, which was capped off yesterday by one of the 10 best matches I have ever seen, a five-set classic between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Please try to catch a rerun of this match sometime in the next couple of days, or go online to Wimbledon.org, where you can watch it in low-def quality for free (assuming your Windows Media Player is completely up-to-date and you download their little DivX thing).
Also in sports TV we have LE TOUR! The last two days were capped by great sprint finishes of guys pounding out 45 mph+ speeds after 5 hours of pedaling at 30 mph. I don't need to tell you again that this is one of many reasons why it is the most difficult and most grueling sporting event on the planet - and also one of the most exciting. I don't want to spoil today's stage for you (catch the prime-time expanded coverage tonight at 8 PM on Versus) but I will say one thing: watch out for the crash!

I do want to editorialize a bit on the current doping scandal the sport is embroiled in that forces the exclusion of a couple of contenders from the race (Ivan Basso, Floyd Landis, etc.). I think that the average sporting fan should not be overly put off by this high level of "corruption" in the sport, whether you view doping as "cheating" or "just a way to get ahead".
Why should doping concerns not even be in your mind when watching this race? Because even if you fashion yourself an athlete (like myself) and you dope the fuck out of your blood and take a gallon of steroids daily, there is still no way in hell you will be able to ride a bike 125 miles a day for three weeks straight, at 30 mph. Bottom line. Am I excusing it? No. I'm just saying that any man game enough to take on an entire country on his bicycle has balls enough to be respected. Now those that doped in baseball, however, are another matter in my humble opinion. But that's for another rant.
So who is my favorite rider in lieu of Floyd's self-imposed exile? I have two: one is Levi Leipheimer, the American most likely to win the Tour this year (I give him a 10% chance). The other is Wim Vansevenant. Why? Every year he always manages to come in nearly last place, not dropping out for weeks, if at all. Already he's off to his usual fantastic start, in 184th place, somehow already losing over three mintues despite the fact that every rider received the same time this stage (due to a crash in the last 3 km). I think he lost it in the prologue, which was only about 6 miles in length and won with a time of 8:50 by Fabian Cancellara. I don't know for sure - I just hope he continues his excellence for as long as possible.

Finally on TV we have the art that is "Big Brother 8". Of course they had to put a bunch of annoying bitchy sorority chicks in there along with the token black and two token fags, one of which deserves the gonorrhea that he happily told everyone in the house he has. Not that I'm against blacks or gays, but come on. At least try a LITTLE to disguise television's inherent racism against women over the age of 40 and blacks/other minorities. Hispanics are like 25% of this country. You can't tell me you couldn't find at least ONE Hispanic to be in the cast. And why ONE black person? Just like Danielle and Marcellus in seasons past, the lone black has been a token to keep the otherwise all-Anglo cast from seeming too eugenic.
But considering I actually LIKE this show, I have to look past my reservations a bit. BB8 seems like it has promise, and Kail has to be the biggest MILF in show history. And I know thats what I watch it for. Oh yeah, and the backstabbing and nervous father-daughter tension and stuff too. Yep.

Anyway, all play and no work makes Danny a happy boy, so I'll be going now. I'm in the mood for some athletic activity, and since I don't own a bicycle, I guess I'll go for a sport I can actually play (tennis). So I'll catch up with y'all later.
Yeah, I did just use "y'all" in a sentence. Deal with it.

Fantasy Football

2007-07-04T00:10:00.000-04:00

http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/f1/register/joinprivateleague_league_select?.scrumb=

ID: 138677
Password: kangaroo

sign up.

History is made (part 2)

2007-07-02T18:50:00.000-04:00

In the meantime since the posting of part 1, I have figured out another historical feature of this post: it is the first by this blog that occurred with Tony Blair not in power in the UK. Yeeahhh.

Anyway, I'll get back to the subject of where exactly I was and why I neglected my duties as lead of this prestigious blog. So I already accounted for 4 days of my absence, I can honestly account for more.
Firstly, I must mention my previously mentioned modem. This new modem came about as a result of the fact that I upgraded my internet service from "supposedly lightning-fast but not fast enough" to "faster-than-lightning and probably still not fast enough". For once I've had a taste of those 45-second song downloads from Limewire (which I no longer use in favor of more sophisticated organized-crime-entities such as OiNK) I want 30 seconds per song. Fast is just not fast enough when it comes to stealing.
The point of that of course was to say that my modem installation (and troubleshooting, naturally, this is Comcast we're talking about) caused a delay in my ability to post, if only for a day or two. Allow me to be generous to myself and say two days.

The next interval (which actually IS a bona-fide excuse) which I can account for is my new flooring. Instead of rolling around on five-year-old carpet harboring enough allergens to make Chuck Norris sick, I now glide (in my rolling chair, with a plastic mat underfoot) across nice, shiny hardwood. REAL hardwood. Hardwood that dents when you roll a TV across it and changes color slightly where you spill water on it and don't clean it up immediately because your dog has other ideas about what your current priorities are (both from personal experience). Moving shit out of my room(s) (two days), actually installing it with some hired help (three days) and then moving shit back into my room (ongoing) cost me money, sleep, lots of effort, and a good week of blog opportunities.

Look for part three coming to a blog near you.

History is made (part 1)

2007-07-02T18:06:00.000-04:00

This post is historical in a couple of ways.

It ends the longest hiatus between posts in the history of this blog
It comes after the only month in which I did not publish a full-length editorial
It comes one day after the ten-year anniversary of OK Computer

So maybe the third point is a bit tenuous. But either way, it's great to be back!

Back, you say. So where did you go? Ah, dear reader, I have somewhat lied to you. I didn't "go" anywhere for the entire duration of the mini-hiatus.

Sure, I visited the campuses (wouldn't "campi" be a much cooler plural form?) of the University of Florida (Gainesville, Floriduh) and the Florida State University (Tallahassee), which took two days of possible posts away, and actually four if you count the day before (packing) and the day after (unpacking). Granted, there really wasn't much packing involved considering there was only one overnight stay, but hey, I like to take advantage of all the excuses I can get.

Because I have a modem which I don't 100% trust (I hope it didn't hear me say that) to post this in parts to ensure that nothing occurrs which would kick me offline and make me have to retype the whole thing, as has happened before. Yes, I could just type this out in word processing and then copy-paste, but that would be less . . . authentic.

400th post

2007-06-10T14:01:00.001-04:00

I just wanted to take a second to inform everyone that the 400th post was posted about Akon.

Akon

2007-06-05T19:33:00.001-04:00

He was born in...Australia, right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drR7G5jBogA

I Don't Care

Why I can't trust technology (especially cell phones)

Complacency... and some lyrics

Hey boys and girls

Tour de France

Paranoia and Landmarks

Perception and Me, Perception and You

People

4 Years

dunhdunhdunhdun

Globalization Musique Concrete, Etude No. 1, for voice

So . . . 2010, eh?

A new black

The Dystopian Nature of Facebook *satire*

An idea

Fountain of Youth

Welcome back my friends

Hard to believe . . .

Primal Dream

grrrrr

Things I want to buy

This is no thesis

what the fuck

Death harmonic

Word of the Day

Money, Love and Change

$$$$$

Don't worry, this is our secret

I know that this is not goodbye . . .

http://ihateannefrank.blogspot.com/

The Dark Night: Official Review

Honorable Mention

I'm bored,

S.O.S.

Why Can't Illegal Downloading Be More User-Friendly?

Fire and Brimstone

A Letter to the 44th President of the United States

This is inspiring

Radiohead

Response to Joe's Individualism post

Individualism

Fortress

I'm Back!!!

The perfect day

Moment of revelation

finished!!!

new motto

OH BOY

GODDAMN IT

Revisionism

RaeF Update

Don't Make Me a Target

another update

update

progress

Coming soon

omg

2008

Airband 2007 - Starring Oprah and Ely

New Blaq Mamba

Thoughts on life, love, and the things that do and do not matter

A novel theory

Well . . .

Concert update

Indulgent Blues Solo

I'll Do What I Want

Review: John Mayer - "Continuum"

Review update

A couple blurbs

In the news . . .

Today

Update

Interesting BSOD

Blog changes

Review: Radiohead - "In Rainbows"

A laugh, a cry, and a blurb or two

So where have I been?

Oh my god OH MY GOD

The Smartest Band In The Business

Everyone loves an update

The Dystopian Nature of Facebook satire