::
2009 23 November :: 12.52 am
:: Mood: Tired
:: Music: BnL - Barenaked Ladies are Men
hi journal. it's been a while.
umm... so. i'm just waiting for this cd to burn, and then i think i'm going to bed. i have to get up at like seven, so i'd like to shoot for around 6 hours of sleep anyway. that would be nice.
so, it turns out i'm waaaay waaay below the poverty line, so not only could i have been collecting welfare this whole time, i also qualify for deferment on my loans. but since my first payment is due in less than a week, and there's no online application, i won't have enough time to mail my application in and get it processed before my payment is due. so, we'll see what happens.
might try and call shannon tomorrow so i can get that damn coffee thing out of the way. not really looking forward to it at all, but maybe i can nab a few cigarettes out of the deal, and maybe she'll finally leave me alone after. that'd be swell.
so i found out that my gig on the 18th is at the eagles club in grand haven. first rehearsal is on the 2nd, somewhere in holland. i also got the set list. thankfully i'm at least somewhat familiar with most of it... even played a few of the tunes before. but here's what i have to spend the next three weeks learning:
867-5309 / Jenny.........................................Tommy Tutone
An American Girl..........................................Tom Petty
Back Door Man............................................The Doors
Brown Eyed Girl............................................Van Morrison
Can't always get what you want.....................Rolling Stones
Crazy little thing called love...........................Queen
Evil Ways.....................................................Santana
Fire............................................................Jimi Hendrix
Fly away.....................................................Lenny Kravitz
Gimme 3 steps............................................Lynyrd Skynyrd
Gloria.........................................................Van Morrison
Hard to Handle............................................Black Crowes
Hey Jealousy...............................................Gin Blossoms
Hoochie Koochie Man/Bad to the Bone...........Muddy Waters
I Feel Fine..................................................Beatles
I wanna be sedated.....................................Ramones
Keep your hands to yourself.........................Georgia Satellites
La Grange..................................................ZZ Top
Long Tall Sally............................................Little Richard
Money.......................................................Barrett Strong
My Generation............................................The Who
No Matter What..........................................Badfinger
One after 909............................................Beatles
Please Please Me.......................................Beatles
Pride and Joy.............................................Stevie Ray Vaughan
Revolution.................................................Beatles
Roadhouse Blues......................................The Doors
Road Runner.............................................Bo Diddly/The Gants/The Who
Rock & Roll...............................................Led Zeppelin
Satisfaction...............................................Rolling Stones
Sweet Home Alabama................................Lynyrd Skynyrd
Tina Marie................................................Kenny Wayne Shepherd
Twist and Shout........................................Beatles
What I like about you.................................The Romantics
Young Blood............................................. Bad Company
it's a pretty interesting mix, i think. should be fun. and i hope there are drink specials. because that's what my life seems to have become.
in other news, i've been told in no uncertain terms that i have to move to a big city if i ever want to have a career in audio. and i gotta say, it makes a lot of sense.
well, my truck is done, apparently. but i don't have all the money up front, so i have to wait until friday when my check comes, and in the meantime offer the dude something as collateral. but at least i have wheels again. and now, no money for gas. *puts barrel in mouth*
another circumstance that makes me want to do bad things with guns is conservapedia.com. now, anyone who sees that name should have a pretty good idea of what it is. and if you don't, a few appropriately aimed clicks around the site should pretty much fill you in. i don't know whether to be amused or disheartened, but either way, i'll share some highlights.
first up is the "conservapedia commandments," which are their equivalent to the "editorial policies" found on wikipedia.
CONSERVAPEDIA COMMANDMENTS
1. Everything you post must be true and verifiable. Do not copy from Wikipedia[1] or elsewhere unless it was your original work.[2]
2. Always cite[3] and give credit to your sources,[4] even if in the public domain.[5]
3. Any content you create or change (including edits, new pages, images and links) must be family-friendly, clean, concise, and without gossip or foul language.
4. When referencing dates based on the approximate birth of Jesus, give appropriate credit for the basis of the date (B.C. or A.D.). "BCE" and "CE" are unacceptable substitutes because they deny the historical basis. See CE.
5. Do not post personal opinion on an encyclopedia entry. Opinions can be posted on Talk:pages or on debate or discussion pages. Advertisements are prohibited.
6. The operation of unauthorized wiki-bots is prohibited.[6]
7. Unproductive activity, such as 90% talk page edits and only 10% quality edits to Conservapedia articles, may result in blocking of the account.[7] See the Guidelines for more detail.
Edits which violate these rules will be deleted. Users who violate the rules repeatedly will be blocked. Administrators have discretion to act on matters not specifically mentioned here, such as vandalism and sockpuppets.
i find number 3 interesting, in that most of their articles consist primarily of the latest gossip, mixed with some history here and there. for 4, i'll admit i thought it was stupid to change it from BC to BCE, but at the same time the old notation was constantly under debate, and at least now there's a universal standard we can all stick to. what's so wrong with that? it does seem kind of messed up to base our entire timeline on a dude whose records of existence are hazy on the details, to say the least. and i would love to see them sick an admin on a sockpuppet.
------------------------
next, we have their article on the current president of the united states. (we'll take this one paragraph at a time)
"Barack Hussein Obama II aka Barry Soetoro[1] (allegedly[2][3][4][5][6] born in Honolulu Aug. 4, 1961) is the 44th President of the United States, and previously served as a first-term Democratic Senator from Illinois (2005-2008). Obama and his running mate Senator Joseph Biden won the presidential election[7] after 23 months of campaigning that spent over $700 million,[8] much of it raised from undisclosed or fraudulent donors.[9] Obama spent far more per vote than McCain did: Obama spent $7.39 per vote, while McCain spent only $5.78 per vote.[10]"
talk about another dude with some hazy life details, i can understand the skepticism to a certain extent. but more than that, they are just brutally bashing the living hell out of this guy, no pun intended. and all because he's *gasp* a democrat. i feel bad for him really, if half the stuff they say about his past is true. a rough life, and now given the helm of a country aimed straight at the gutter, with little to no help, not much experience, and a bunch of people constantly accusing him of being a muslim, kenyan, indonesian terrorist. the only thing i'd probably accuse him of would be getting in over his head. beyond that, does it really matter? soetoro was his stepfather - so, nonbiological (not that it would matter anyway). and barry's just a boring name. and, given the constitutional stipulation for the separation of church and state, along with the freedom of religion, he is perfectly allowed to be muslim if he wants to. his being muslim (not that he is, necessarily, but just for the sake of argument) should not affect his governmental policies and decisionmaking in any way, just as it was so HORRIBLY AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION for president bush to allow his christianity to influence his procedures while in office. not that bush was a bad guy. he was nice, wanted to be liked by people, made me laugh and feel good about myself. i have no problem with that. but, once again, perhaps he was just in a little too far over his head.
"As President Obama has pushed for establishing a Palestinian state over the objection of Israel's Prime Minister,[11] inclusion of Turkey in the European Union[12] and holding Guantanamo detainees indefinitely without trial.[13]"
this is not even a complete sentence. if you're trying to make an encyclopedia, that is unacceptable.
"Obama's budget and stimulus bill advanced his socialist idea of 'spreading the wealth.'[14] [15] His health care plan would force employers to purchase health care or pay a fine and will force many into a poorly run single payer system.[16] To announce his trip to Berlin in July 2008, Obama used posters which show a marked similarity to posters of Lenin and Che Guevara.[17][18] During Obama's youth in Hawaii, he developed a strong, almost Father/Son relationship with Frank Marshall Davis, a high level Communist Party functionary[19] while Obama has stated that his favorite professors in school were themselves Marxists. "
well, add socialist, marxist, and communist to the list, i suppose. and if he was born in kenya, as they would seem to believe, then why and how does he get to hawaii to promptly find himself a mentor to aid in developing his innate communist tendencies?
i could keep going, but i think that's more than enough. i do like some of the subheadings in the article though:
-Obamunism
-Barack Obama's Uncharitableness/Liberal Elitism, and Social Darwinism
-Early Life - Birth certificate controversy
-Obama is likely the first Muslim President
^^^ okay, hang on right there. i have to read some of this.
"The argument that Obama is a Muslim includes:
* Obama declared in prepared remarks, 'The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country - I know, because I am one of them.'[109]"
oh yeah, this is good. the first sentence of the quote is just a simple statement. end sentence, move on to the next one. subject of the sentence is "many other americans". so, saying "i am one of them" is in no way incriminating - although, neither is being muslim. also note the bolded words that they carefully selected, while once again ignoring the standard grammatical rules of the english language.
i'll stop ranting now, but it is pretty interesting stuff. i highly advise checking it out for yourself.
went to a party last night for handyman matters. got pretty drunk. said some things i shouldn't have, but for the most part i don't think anyone really cared. they know bruce, so it's not too surprising.
lions suck. again, not surprising. i've never really gotten into football, though. i enjoy watching, but i'm not invested in any way. it's just something to do.
don't know what to do with the rest of my day. probably just screw around online. maybe read a book or something. pretty lame day.
Maynard and I were prancing in Wisconsin when it happened. He talked to me and I fucked him. He took my face and walked closer to me. He looked so cantankerous. I lived at him again and waited for a hammer from him. "I like to eat tacos?," I asked. He shook his foot and looked me in the ears. "I love train, Spud. I've wanted to pump that for a long time, now." Then he leaned over and gave me an ice cube on the cheek. That was the last time he ever said I love you.
A joyful meandering that wound up being about driveway hockey.
i had just gotten up today, and gone to the bathroom for a solid B.M. the bathroom window was open, and outside it sit the garbage/yard waste/recycle bins. all of a sudden i hear someone walk up alongside our garage, and open up one of the bins. i had finished at this point, and was blowing my nose for good measure. so, the person getting into our recycling heard me and said, "oh, hey, just dropping off some cereal boxes and milk cartons." i recognized Valerie's (the neighbor) voice, and said, "yeah, have at it. the trash is kinda full, though." it was just a very odd way to start my day off.
in other news: happy september! the weather's gorgeous, and the air smells crisp and clean.
:: sorry, neighbor came over to smoke a ciggy ::
what was i saying? eh, whatever.
i should play disc golf again. i made it out there quite a bit the first half of summer, but i haven't played in several weeks. I guess it has been overtaken by driveway hockey, which is honestly a better workout, but you really pay for the next day.
it's actually a lot of fun. we have a net that bruce built, and they spray painted a crease to go in front of it. the garage door is about 2 feet behind the net, so there is some playable space back there, just like the real deal. The rest of the rink is surrounded by short wooden boards to hold the puck in. the rules have been adapted - obviously - to suit our needs, and there's a continual evolution there, but the gameplay itself remains pretty much the same. we have three offensive players (a center and two wingers), a defenseman, and a goalie. the three offense and the defender will rotate positions after every goal. goalies rotate every 30 minutes (the mishmash of homemade pads takes a while to put on). it's like a full-time 3-on-1 rush, but since we suck so bad, sometimes it's still tough to get a puck to drop. even still, if you pepper 'im long enough, something's bound to go through eventually.
here are the basic rules:
> no high sticking (we're out there in our tennis shoes for pete's sake. we don't want to cart anyone to the hospital)
> no cross-checking (same reason)
> no slapshots (or we'll have to listen to the goalies bitch. loudly.)
> the center has to pass before anyone can shoot
> if the puck goes over the boards and out of play, it counts as "clearing the defensive zone," and the offensive players must go back to their start positions (marked with chalk)
> if any of the offensive players are not in their start positions when the center starts the puck, the play is "offside" and must be reset.
> if a defenseman clears the puck over (or through) the fence and into the neighbor's yard, it's a two-minute minor penalty. since the power play has yet to fail, it's pretty much a death knell. although, bruce once killed off 1:56 of the penalty before they scored on him. that's the current record to beat.
they typically like having new people try it out. kevin and masa joined in this past sunday, and i think they had a good time. so hit me up if you're interested. there's no set day that we do it, so it's kinda random. we usually play from mid-afternoon 'til dark.
The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
[] Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
[X] The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (way better than the movies)
[] Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
[X] Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Hellz yes!)
[X] To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (too autobiographical for Lee to make a career of it...)
[] The Bible (never got through all of it. kinda big.)
[] Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
[X] Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (just turn the fucking telescreens off, already. and quit drinking gasoline.)
[X] His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (i LOVE this universe. so vivid.)
[]Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
[] Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
[] Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
[] Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
[] Complete Works of Shakespeare
[] Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
[X] The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (i wish they'd make a movie of this one.)
[] Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
[] Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
[] The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
[] Middlemarch - George Eliot
[] Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
[X] The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (live fast, die young)
[] Bleak House - Charles Dickens
[] War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
[X] The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (don't trust mice anymore.)
[] Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
[] Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
[] Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
[] The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
[] Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
[] David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
[X] Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (allegory, anyone?)
[] Emma - Jane Austen
[] Persuasion - Jane Austen
[X] The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (totally redundant)
[] The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
[] Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
[] Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
[] Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (might have... can't remember)
[] Animal Farm - George Orwell
[X] The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (and angels and demons)
[] One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[] A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
[] The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
[] Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
[] Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
[] The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
[X] Lord of the Flies - William Golding (totally fucked up)
[] Atonement - Ian McEwan
[] Life of Pi - Yann Martel
[] Dune - Frank Herbert
[] Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
[] Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
[] A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
[] The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
[X] A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (leave it to the french to kill my favorite character...)
[X] Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (nothing brave about test-tube babies)
[] The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
[] Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
[] Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
[] Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
[] The Secret History - Donna Tartt
[] The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
[] Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
[] On The Road - Jack Kerouac
[] Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
[] Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
[] Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
[X] Moby Dick - Herman Melville (sean connery is still my favorite ishmael)
[] Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
[] Dracula - Bram Stoker
[] The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (think i read this one too.)
[] Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
[] Ulysses - James Joyce
[] The Inferno – Dante
[] Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
[] Germinal - Emile Zola
[] Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
[] Possession - AS Byatt
[] A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
[] Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
[] The Color Purple - Alice Walker
[] The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
[] Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
[] A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
[X] Charlotte’s Web - EB White (been a LOOONG time)
[X] The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (depressing)
[] Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
[] The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
[X] Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (good companion piece for lord of the flies. reeks of symbolism.)
[] The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
[] The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
[] Watership Down - Richard Adams
[] A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
[] A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
[] The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
[] Hamlet - William Shakespeare
[X] Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
[] Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
My total: 19
Unforgivable omissions from this list:
A Separate Peace - John Knowles
The Trumpet of the Swan - EB White
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The Odyssey - Homer
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Candide - Francois Voltaire
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Stranger - Albert Camus
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells (others might say War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, or The Island of Doctor Moreau, but i have not read those yet)
Mark Twain (c'mon, he couldn't even make the list?)
same for Edgar Allen Poe
Man, I really need to get a life. I can't belive i've actually read that many books. ah, well. at least they're good ones.
::
2009 7 August :: 11.38 pm
:: Mood: alone
:: Music: the Beatles
i often wonder whether it's better or worse that i don't post on here very often. i know that when i'm cruising my friends list, and i'm just doing a cursory screen, i'll sometimes ignore the ones that post like seven times a day. but if there's one that pops up that i haven't seen anything from in a while, i'll give it a read. i don't know. whatever. it is what it is, and if someone gets something out of it, then so be it.
apparently i have to re-learn how to be alone with myself. because i've been solitary here for approximately 9 hours, and i've been bored and lonely for approximately half of that time. so, i played wii, i did my rubiks cube, i cruised the internet, i watched superbad, and now i'm fuckin' here.
that's just lame.
and the more i think about it, the more i realize that it's exactly what i used to do to hide from myself. do a puzzle, play a game, read a book. which i think i may do shortly.
i suppose it's better than drinking myself into oblivion or getting doped up.
speaking of which, our front yard has a mole in it. probably a couple. pretty bad. i mowed this afternoon, and there were tunnels fucking everywhere. the lawn care people sprayed pesticide on it, which means the bugs that the moles feed on should die, but then the moles will just move somewhere else. we just need to kill those bastards. the neighbors won't like us very much if we just scare them off into their lawns. although, maybe then the neighbors will kill them for us.
whatever. i feel too crappy to really care that much. this sinus crud can go away any time now. it's been three days now, and i'm just getting tired of it. and i would like for my nosebleeds to have a chance to heal. that'd be great.
yeah.
well, this was uplifting. sorry about that.
i'm running sound for a live band at the crazy horse saloon on the 21st and 22nd. if you're in the area and would like to stop by, feel free. classic rock goodness, and your daily dose of spud. what more can you ask for?
"There's a way about you that just seems right surrounded by drums, and you come alive to battle it."
i understand what they meant. and yeah, maybe it was just a nice little compliment, and that is all. but maybe not. it almost seems to me as if there is something more to it. as if, in that moment, they had a lucid picture of my mind and my heart and my emotions. like they took a polaroid of my soul. and, it just so happened that - as they saw it - my soul was doing its happy dance, for lack of a better term. and it's true. most of the time when i'm playing drums, i'm happy deep down. it just feels good, and i can focus on that one solitary task (which is actually quite complex and anything but solitary), and it will be enough to distract me from whatever else is going on in my life. unless of course there's a crowd of people watching. but that's not the important part. the important aspect of this observation is that the battle - the maelstrom - that they saw in that instant, isn't happening for me anymore. i mean, it happens every time i go into the basement and jam for half an hour. but then i get done, cool down, and it's gone again. i feel the same way when i'm working on cars, or running sound, or making a recording. it's fun, exciting, exhilarating. it's a challenge for me to conquer. it's a puzzle that i find absolutely fascinating. i need to figure out how it ticks... how to fix it if it's broken... what i could do to make it work better, easier, faster, louder, stronger... you get what i'm saying. then and only then am i truly happy, truly satisfied, fully energized and motivated and ... alive.
and what i want - what i REALLY want more than anything - is to feel that passion in all aspects of my daily life. and it seems that i barely feel it at all anymore. like someone just took all of my energy away. or maybe it's there, but i can't seem to reach it when i need to. it absolutely baffles me.
okay, saying all aspects of my daily life is probably misleading. if i was that excited about taking out the trash, or doing the dishes, and did those chores with the same kind of zeal or fervor that i do in playing drums, it would be creepy and weird. and i'd probably need 12 hours of sleep every day just to maintain my energy levels. so, no i don't want it quite like that. but i want to be able to have a job that i do every day, that offers me the opportunity to have little glimmers of that passion bubble up to the surface from deep within my soul every so often. just enough to remind me of why i'm alive. of why i'm here. of why the fuck nobody's killed me yet. and get a bit of a boost from it, so i have enough energy and self-motivation to be able to get in there and kick it in the butt, like i'm supposed to.
all i know is i'm sick of being poor, i'm sick of being bored, and i'm sick of being either A) stuck at home with a chore list five miles long that i refuse to do, or B) being out and about, thinking about all the chores i have back home that i'm not doing, and about all of the money i'm spending (and not making) in the process of being out. i need something else.
"Well then, I think I may be able to help you. You see, your cat is suffering from what we vets haven't found a word for. his condition is typified by total physical inertia, absence of interest in its ambience - what we vets call "environment" - failure to respond to the conventional external stimuli; a ball of string, a nice juicy mouse, a bird. To be blunt, your cat ... is in a rut. It's the old stockbroker syndrome; angst, weltschmerz, call it what you will-"
"Moping."
"In a way, in a way. Hmm... moping, I must remember that. Well now, what can be done? Tell me sir, have you confused your cat recently?"
"...well-"
"SHH! ... no."
"Yes, well I think I can definitely say that your cat badly needs to be confused."
"What?"
"Confused! To shake it out of its state of complacency. I'm afraid, I'm not personally qualified to confuse cats, but I can recommend an extremely good service. Here is their card."
"Oh... Confuse-a-Cat Ltd..."
My name is chris, and I am in Kansas City (well... shawnee, KS. but close enough). isn't that cool? i thought you'd be impressed.
I'm getting kind of hungry. probably because this entry is about what i've done so far since i've been here.
we got here yesterday morning. i proceeded to burn cds and copy music to my laptop for the next several hours. then we went out to dinner. it was amazing. i got a glass of gewurtstraminer and a fish sandwich. today we went to gymnastics practice, and went shopping at kohls and old navy. then got gelato. now we're chilling at the house. leaving sometime either tomorrow, or early tuesday.
that's about it.
i should get some food. to eat. and stuff.
peace,
Chris
P.S. funny quote of the day:
"I distrust camels, and anyone else who can go a week without a drink." - Joe E. Lewis
i still can't seem to figure out how funny these guys are. i don't know if they're actually funny, or if i just started watching long enough to where brain cells actually started dying.
