Ill-M-I

Jeremy, this song goes out for u man! (I am not sure that it uploaded right, I am on dial up, I'll check it when I get on a beter conection)

Lafayette

I just finished a many hour long car trip from Lafayette to somewhere in the middle of a retirement sector in Tennessee. However, despite the dull drudgery of that statement, the last three or so days have been undiluted, unadulterated, pure, fun. (Whether or not Andrew echoes this I know not, suffice for the moment that I enjoyed it) We played music, blew digital enemies off the face of digital never-never land into alternate realities, discussed possible science fiction tales, watched Pirates II, went bowling, and got ice cream. Day one was a church dinner, and I got to see friends one last time before we left, while eating very good food. Day two, we fooled with each other's musical compositions, (or rather, Andrew fooled with mine, his were slightly more complex than my prehensile grasp of music, so I left them...) We blew digital bad guys into digital astral who knows where on the computer, and then watched pirates II late at night. The next morning, we got up at the crack of noon, or rather, the crack of 11:00 or so. I think I am a minute or two off, but that matters not in the cosmic swing of the multiverse...(hopefully) and went out to Taco Bell, which was a first for me. I had never had whatever I ate at that place before. It was really good though, reminiscent of a creation in Yemen know otherwise as a Shwarma. (Semitic languages don't sound so good to English ears...) We got back, went to Paul's house, and played music Andrew did piano, Paul did base, and I of course played my beloved Kiara who is NOT named after the actress. (things I discovered while watching pirates II a second time. Needless to say this caused some amusement with certain more culture versed individuals, and will probably continue to do so...) I could play music forever... Maybe I should be a rock star... nah, mom would kill me...Just on the side? No, she will kill you! Hmm, maybe this shirt is having an effect on me...(it says "demented" in large letters across the front...) Anyway, that was three days in 77 square inches.

any ideas, concepts, or implied affiliations are copyrighted, but I won't take any responsibility for them either, so they are probably just going to sit here as a result of my irritation with the crazy legal system in the aforesaid country...At least, I think it was aforesaid...I had to have mentioned the US somewhere on this blog...

Glorious Ping Pong

Today Mom and Peter and Lydia all went to Tennessee or somewhere thereabouts. Yesterday, Dad went to Yemen, and that left Abraham and myself at my grandparents, and they felt obliged to entertain us for some reason, so they took us to the library and I finally got Dune Messiah, by Frank Herbert, a book I have wanted to read for the past year and a half. (So far it is living up to its predecessor: its loaded with subtlety and complexity in a speculative fiction matrix: what could be better?) After that, we went to a fitness center which had, glory of glories, a ping pong table I played my second sport this summer. The first was ultimate Frisbee out at the Kesslers, and this was the second. (very sad showing, I was hoping to play American football and some other things as well, but all the respectable teens have all gone off and gotten jobs, and the rest sit entranced in front of their Xbox.) Anyway, I played for an hour and a half or so, and I feel great. I had to play with standard American paddles which are like wood. No good, considering that I had one of my now three paddles, and Abe had his at our grandparents house. (one of my four paddles broke. Horrible.) But I got on, and I realized that I am out of shape. Very out of shape. Not a surprise though, considering the amount I have not been exercising. This was kind of a random post, but hey, I guess we are all allowed a small amount of insanity at least.

The Beast Within...

Recently, I saw a car that had a sticker on the side of the door that read "When all else fails, READ INSTRUCTIONS" I discovered certain reasons for the sticker as well. As repulsive as the idea is, there are reasons for it: it works. I have now had my Digitech RP 80 for a year, but I only used the factory presets that it had, oblivious to the wide range of wahs, flangers, amp models, pickup simulators, expressions, reverb settings, noise gates, and choruses available to me at the touch of a button or three. Presently, I have designed several settings, but I don't really like any of them, but the wahs are fun... very fun.

Camping

Camping is nonsensical. Why create civilization if the only point of it is to get away from it? Besides, civilization is good: it has electricity, computers, music, IM, email, soft beds, and toilets that don't stink and aren't in a building far away where you have to walk to get there, and when you pull up the lid on a toilet in civilization, you can't see this cess pool, sitting turgedly there, putrifying the place. Besides all these good resons not to go camping, all my friends, whether in Yemen or America, are all in some form of civilization. This ends my tirade on camping.

Despite all that though, there was one good thing about camping: we got to go jet skiing. Those things are fun! Dad got on, and took off for the far shore, going at about 4/5 throtle, turned around, and came back, same speed. He did get up to full throtle for a while, but he settled back down. I got on, and floored it, and went in circles, and figure eights, and every other kinky geometric shape I could think of. While I was using the monster given to me the way it was designed to be used, Dad fell off. I wasn't trying to or anything, but that doesn't stop me from feeling really good about it afterwards. I think I also terrified my mom, but I was going slow and wasn't being nuts, so that was kinda bad I think, but the rest of it was awesome. You would hit a wave, and have to eat it you were going so fast, spray shooting up in an arc from your sides...Awesome in every way.

One last thing. The Michigan dunes. They are tinny. If you have ever been there, immagine something about three times taller and twice as steep composed of perfectly dry, powdered sand, you have Socotra's dunes. The clossest thing to the dunes on Socotra was the glacer hill thingie, but even they fell short of Socotra's dunes, and these were half rock and on a rock, and thus were cheating, but then, you can't expect all of plannet earth to be as good as Socotra...

His Very Own Instrumental...

Yesterday evening I went with my cousin Kate and my two brothers to see one of Kate's friends perform at the county fair. That was really neat. We got there, and I saw all this equipment piled up, two footpedals, (both boss. That name didn't connect at this stage...), an acoustic guitar, a bass guitar, and then some other smaller instruments, a recorder, a tom tom drum thing, a triangle, and some other small stuff. Any way, he set up all his stuff, and started playing. He had a hilarious song about proposing to a girl on Halloween when she was dressed up as a ghost or something, and he had another one about how the medicine and drug industry is in league with doctors to get rich off of us, but that isn't what I want to talk about. The two pedals that I mentioned before. One of them was the boss me-50 (not the bass model) and the other was the boss looping station, which I didn't notice at the time. Both pedals packed a walloping punch though. When I first got there, I looked at his instruments and I said to myself, no electric. He had it. You just couldn't see it. It was disguised as an acoustic guitar and a pedal. He could make that thing scream, and wail, and everything else. It was awesome. Being an amateur guitarist, I really could appreciate the kind of effort he put into learning that instrument. He was incredible. The second pedal though. He would sit down, and push buttons on the pedal, and then sit down with his drum. He would play the drum for a while, and then put it down, but the drums kept going. He then struck a triangle at certain choice moments, before putting that down and puttering around for a while. Meanwhile, the drum and the triangle are still going off. By the end of the song, he would have thrown in another two drums, a tambourine, a recorder, his base guitar, some beat boxing or vocals, and of course some acoustic and electric guitar. It was fun to listen to. I could have sat there all night, but Kate had to go to bed because she had an early appointment at her job this morning and needed sleep and peter was kinda stoned, despite the noise. I had never seen a one man instrumental before, but I would love to see one again. He has an album out, I am going to see if I can get my hands on it...

Chips and Travel and Music

I have made a midyears resolution: I am not eating any more chips. Period. I was on a boat trip out to the middle of a lake, and we stopped in this backwater and ate lunch. While eating, I accidentally dropped a chip into the lake, and then watched in horror as it created an oil slick. Five minutes latter, I looked over the edge of the boat again, and grease was still comming off of it just as fast as it was before, with no apparent decrease in speed or anything. I was revolted, and decided that I didn't need that kind of food, and I have given up potato chips. Don't get me wrong here, they taste fine, it's just that it is disgusting. I have no problem with them health wise (as this post makes it sound I guess) but I was merely revolted, thus no more chips. Laugh all you like. (Jeffrey will thats for sure.)

Today, we traveled from TN to IN. A distance of about an inch on my screen. It took eight hours in the car, and I think I left my AP student handbook at my grandparents house, and I need it to get my scores. Mega major bummer. To make up for that stupid cosmic twist of Fate, Fate granted me cable internet. Wicked fast, and on 24/7. Gorgeous.

On a musical side, my cousin and my cousin's friend played my cousin's friend's music (his own composition. His name was Jeremy, and my cousin is Kate for simplification in later posts if they make it.) They are really good. They left for a recording studio this evening to record some of their music. I should be able to get some m1n15t3r onto my blog here as well, as upload times will be much reduced. I could also put up the latest Xebec song depending on comments.

m1n15t3r

Its a band, or rather a guy, and the name is pronounced minister I think. With a computer. No humans at all, either singing, or playing instruments. Just him and his computer. I am not on my computer, and I don't have all the audio juggling tech that I have at my finger tips on her, so I can't post his song for a while. Bummer. If you like metal kinda stuff, go to http://music.download.com/m1n15t3r/3615-8433_32-100584710.html?Tag=MDL_artist_tab_apsongs for a couple of free downloads. I recommend the Crunch. I am not completely sure how he made this, but I have tried to do stuff like this and it always falls apart as soon as I try to do anything. My most successful attempt was me programming the computer to play specific wavelengths with specific distortion... I got about 30 seconds of really bad sounding noise with a cruddy tick, tick, tick for a beat (I even tried drawing the sound patterns: a horrible failure) before I gave up. This guy is a genius, admittedly he is using different tools and programs, but all the same, this is really cool.

Enough!

That's it, enough. I am not an American, and I am sick and tired of hearing about patriotism and nationalism and the fourth of July, and it isn't even here yet, and it won't be for two days. I am going to go and buy black clothes, black lip stick, black nail polish, and some chains, and wear it all! I am going to embrace the anarchist within me! Of course, I have no expectations that anyone will appreciate any of it, but hey, I feel like expressing myself.

Friends and Relations

Yesterday night, a whole bunch of friends and relations of the Crowders (my mom's parents) came over, and most of them were excellent cooks, and the meal was great. After the meal, we all went in to the piano, and mom played the piano, I played guitar (Abe has a new, very nice, very expensive acoustic guitar), and Grandpa played violin. I didn't think we sounded too bad, but then that was because I played quietly. Mom has been playing piano for nearly forty years now...And she is really good, so she held things together. We played some hymns, and people sang, and we had a very nice evening, despite the fact that I was supposed to know everyone, but really didn't. The hymns that we pulled off sounded great. The funniest thing that evening was this funky lady with shortish kinda bobbed red hair who came up to me grabbed my cheeks and went, "You're cute!" before turning three hundred and sixty degrees around in a circle as I fell over backwards. (I didn't quite hit the floor...) After she had turned her circle, she said, "I'm going to steal you and take you to my church for all the girls to look at!" which was worse. I mean, what do you say to that? All that came to my poor beleaguered mind was: someone make her go away, but you couldn't say that, least of all directly to her face. Anyway, I am still trying to recover from that harrowing experience.

Of psychology and Aquariums

I know, I know, a weird mix, and it doesn't sound interesting, but that's my life at the moment. I think to stay alive mentally, and I was taken to a really nice aquarium, so here goes. I won't even talk about psychology, despite the fact that I could, I just thought I would use the word, as it is impressive. At the moment, we are staying with my grandparents in Tennessee, in a retirement area, where 50% of the population is over the age of 50, and then a good 75% of the rest is over 30. The result of that is that there are no teens living in the area with two exceptions, me and my brother Abraham. The end result of that is that there are two very bored teens in Tennessee. We are good brothers, we understand accouter and we get along great, but family is family, and you just want to get away from it occasionally, especially if your family includes six little kids, both cousins and otherwise, as well as multiple aunts and uncles and other long lost relatives that you wouldn't even know you had. Any way, there are all these old people in the area, and most of them have had a life of eating well, even the ones under the age of 30, and there are a host of fat people. Large, bloated, distorted, with a natural transportation method reminiscent to that of ducks. I can't wait to go to Indiana where there are teens, and not so many fat, old, grouchy people.

The Aquarium was awesome. There was this one large tank with 3500 some fish in it, including at least 5 two meter long sharks. I can now say that I have had a large shark swim menacingly over me. When you are first introduced to the tank, you are at the top of it and can only see a small part of it, but you keep getting different views of the tank, with new fish and new types of coral and all. At one point close to the end, the path goes under and through the tank, and there are large glass domes to climb in and out of to see the fish, but you can't see the path from outside of the tank, so the path through it was a complete surprise and very cool.

that's it for my life at the moment, try not to die of excitement while reading it.

Timeline & my Girl

I have a new absolute favorite book: Timline, by Michael Crichton. Quantom Mechanics and the medevil ages all in one. The guy is an absolute genius. If you like either quantom mechanics or knights and ladies and whatnot, read it. This book is right up my ally, at any rate. It starts to get really, really good around page 13o. It also has some archeology thrown in.

The second thing is that my purdy black singing girl (guitar) still needs a name. I posted about it in the last post, but only Jeffrey commented. There are some "rules" to the game, although if someone came up with a really neat name outside of the parameters I set up, chances are I would use it. Suggestions would be much appreciated.

Sorry about the really short post, I was just so excited over my new favorite book (I havn't had a favorite book for several years now) that I had to post about it.

In the US with my Guitar

I am not an american. This is something that I have realized quite intensely today and yesterday. I have mostly the same ideisms that the rest of america has, but my values are all off. This is something that I have only come to appreciate recently. The intense focus on individuality and yet at the same time conformity is rather unnerving: everyone has a car, and then drives it. Conformity. And yet every car is different, and they are usually the only person in the car, showing an individual lifestyle.

My guitar needs a name, and its a she. She is dark and chaotic, but she is understanding for the most part. She does have a temper though. I took her appart to bring her with me, and she is still mad at me despite the fact that I stayed up far latter than I should have last night putting her together again. She kept going out of tune when I tried to play her with mom. She was just fine earlier today when it was just the two of us. At any rate, I have considered several names. Darcy, which means dark one, but that is a guy's name. Melanie, which means dark one as well, but I have a friend by that name and I don't want to 1. insult her. 2. give her ideas. 3. insult her friend and give him ideas. That said. I need a name for her. She is a Yamaha solid body electric with a black finish and a white pickguard. She is alder, with a maple neck and a rosewood fingerboard. She's got two sets of single coil pickups and one humbucker, and she is in need of a name.

I am Going in Circles

Or at least it feels like it. This is going to be a fast one: I still have to pack, and we get on the plane tonight, lol. I just finished school! Yeah! Mega-wicked awesome! I am now a senior.

We leave for the states tonight, without a good chance to say goodbye to friends I have known a decade and longer and may not be able see again ever. Bad! Mega-wicked terrible!

This is my fiftieth post! I have hung on to this thing much longer than I thought I would. I am usually a jumpy kinda guy, my dad describes me in all seriousness as obsesive compulsive for new stuff. I try everything, and then hang onto the really good stuff, like guitar, this blog incidentally, and several creative pastimes of mine. It is kinda nice to be able to talk on this thing, to have a voice, albeit a small one.

Have to go pack, have to say goodbyes, have to finish cleaning my room, have to say goodbye to my old life. If you actually want to read something, read the post below this one.

Last Weekend

Last weekend was hectic, as I believe the list showed. At any rate, The last two days have been even busier: I did four Pre Calculus homeworks in the time allotted for one in a heroic (maybe) attempt to get an academic award. Anyway, that is now over with, and all I have left is a test over two presidents and a vocab quiz before I am DONE!

I don't know why I am actually doing this, but I will give a review of Narnia for our Phantom... Narnia was great. The witch was by far the coolest character. The Bull was also really cool, and the centaurs were done very well indeed. The graphics were great, and it hardly deviated at all from the story. They didn't know much about the language of weapons though, because when Peter arrives in Aslan's camp he pulls out his sword and waves it around: a sign of contempt as well as a chalange: Basically, he was saying come and get me, I am hostile to you, I have not come in peace and I can take you all on all at once. Also, at the very beginning of the battle at the end, He pulls out his sword and then gives the order to charge, but the gryfins fly over...Go figure. Also, the witch should so have barbecued Peter, because she was orders of magnitude better than he was. The other thing was that Aslan's voice was nowhere near deep enough. The only problem that I noticed with the computer graphics was the train at the beginning: the steam looked good except that it was going about four times too fast.

Thermite was bad. Very bad. One of my teachers heard about our enterprise and tried to do it for his science class, so we gave him all of our hard earned aluminum powder, and he pulled iron II oxide off the shelf (which is supposed to do in a pinch) as opposed to iron III oxide. He mixed it up with our aluminum in the right (I think) proportions and then pulled about a foot of magnesium off of the school's supply roll. It wouldn't light. Nothing would light. (besides the matches which we lit with reckless abandon.) We tried everything, nothing worked, so now we have this lethal red powder just sitting in his classroom. I think we didn't have fine enough powder, and I have heard that you can get it out of etch-e-sketches...

Xebec and Zarz of Hazard... I haven't actually done anything with them recently except work on themes and such, although I have worked for several hours on a song for Zarz of Hazard which is nearing a complete stage. I hope to finish writing it today and record it with Tim tomorrow. I also hope to actually do something with Xebec now that my computer has unglitched...

The new song is Song X by East West on the album Light in Guenivere's Garden. We go to the States in two days. I have to (in order of importance) dismantle my guitar (so I can take it with me in my carry on. I really don't like the idea of intentionally taking it apart...) pack and lastly clean up my room and my cupboard and drawers etc. I don't think I will be able to post for a while...

My Weekend

I know this sounds funny to you American types, but I just finished having my last weekend of the school year(weekends here are Thursday-Friday) . I did a lot of stuff: so much that it would not fit nicely on a blog, and it certainly would not be fun to read, so I will give you a list, and then let you vote in the comments, and the top two picked will get posted:

My Friend's Exodus
Frisbee
Abe's birthday party
five hour Mech Warrior Fray
A day of Firsts
Thermite Attempts
Narnia The Movie
Zarz of Hazard
Xebec

Computers and Their Users

A friend of mine showed me a hillarious site on computers. Here is an exerpt for you. I will try to link the site, but I may forget.


Tech Support: "Hello, tech support, can I help you?"
Customer: (slowly) "Oohh." (pause) "I think I did a bad thing."
Tech Support: "Ok, so tell me what's up."
Customer: "Well, my computer was running great. Everything was working fine, I had no problems whatsoever."
Tech Support: "Ok..."
Customer: "So I decided to open it up and have a look inside. I saw all these wires dangling all over the place. There were grey flat ones, and small red, black, and yellow ones, and it seemed like they weren't connected to anything. So I decided to plug them all in."
Tech Support: "Um, you mean you plugged them all in? What did you plug them into?"
Customer: "Well, whatever I could get them to connect to. I saw pins sticking off of some of the boards that didn't have anything on them, so I plugged all the loose wires in to make it run better."
Tech Support: "And then you..."
Customer: "And so I plugged them all in, and I hit the power button, and there was this loud bang and a flash and a puff of smoke. Now it doesn't work at all."
Tech Support: (suppressing all emotion and turning deep crimson) "Can you hold for a minute, please?"
Kaboom! "Explosive" doesn't adequately describe the laughter. I related the story to some co-workers between gasps for breath. Several of the techs and I had quite the laugh fest while he was on hold. After about five minutes of eye-popping, sweat-beading laughter, I wiped away the tears, took a sip of water, and came back on the line. I knew it'd be futile to even attempt to troubleshoot it.
Tech Support: "Ok, well why don't we just have you wrap it up in the original packing material and send it back to us, we'll take care of the whole thing."
And so another computer newbie learned that the extra power supply cables and unused IDE ribbon cables don't have to be plugged in for the computer to work just fine.

here is another one...


Customer: "Hi, I think I've got a problem with my monitor."
Tech Support: "Ah. Do you still have an image?"
Customer: "Yes, best image ever. Thing is, when I look at it from the side, I see red hot components."
Tech Support: "Uh, when you look at it from the SIDE? How can you see any components?"
Customer: "Well, through that big smoking hole."

Ben Hur

Yesterday I went through Ben Hur. I don't recall having ever seen a slower, more boring movie. The chariot race was ok, but aside from that, there was a complete lack of excitement. Judah's relationship with Esther made no sense to me whatsoever at all, and each scene took forever to start: You would see two people facing each other at opposite ends of a hall for say, and they would stand there and look at each other for a minute or two, literally! Before they even started either talking or walking towards each other, or if you were lucky, both at once. If I had a good DVD editing program I could cut 25% of the time out and still have a comprehensive movie, reducing it from the three some hour mammoth that it is to something more manageable. Also, the plot was dull and straight forward. A good plot should not be completely comprehended the first time. There should be some reason to go back and watch it again, and you should enjoy it more the second time through. Most of my favorite books are like that as well. (Dune is a notable example.) At the end of the show I was left wondering what the behemoth was doing parading around with eleven academy awards. My own life is more exciting, which makes me wonder: if that is the case, why am I posting about it?

Graduation

Sorry for the depressing last post. At any rate, I am one of the honor guards for the graduation ceremony next Wednesday (I doubt they chose me for the hair...). Jeremy is graduating, and all the seniors were wandering around in their capes and hat things, and photos were taken. On seeing themselves, Jeremy exclaimed, "foggies! We've become old foggies!" Whether he was pleased or not, I have yet to discern. My cousin's opinion on all the get-up is that it can make anyone look ugly, and I agree. Maybe I am just jealous, but somehow I doubt it: the cape things look hot and restraining, and the hats are designed to blow off in a breeze... Plus, they were not designed to go over an afro, or even just a halfro...

The End of My Life

My life is largely coming to the end of my control. My friends are going to colleges in universities two continents away from me, all my classes next year with one exception (muzik) don't look like any fun, and my summer has been taken away from me (we are trekking all over the states, but we will only spend a week or so in Lafayette, and we will have to go camping... I will probably have to learn to drive sometime, and I have had less time to play computers recently, and it doesn't look like I will be able to play them much in the future either. After I graduate, I will probably wind up in some university some where and discover that it is not all its cracked up to be, and find myself with ten minutes of free time a day, studying the heck out of who knows what, only to get a job and discover that its not all its cracked up to be either... A friend of mine once said this: life sucks, then you die, and I am starting to realize how true that is.