Worst Song Ever, Part 2:

Worst song ever # PKHM8989JJ3QK5 Oliver Lieb - Subraumstimulation:

Imagine, if you will, a computer. On this computer is a sentient piece of software. This software has access to a library of drum sounds. The software's only reason for existence, is to increase the size of the library by recombining the drum sounds playing those sounds, recording the sounds played as new drum sounds, and then recombining them on and on into infinity. Now imagine that the computer on which this software is running has the utterly massive storage capacity of a single floppy disk. Are you seeing where I'm going with this?


Now imagine also that, by sentience, we are only talking about amoebic sentience; something maybe 8 bits more complicated than on and off. But majestic things have been done with tiny processors and tiny storage, you retort. Now imagine that the software has to learn more complex things by doing them. By the time it can even begin to create anything more complex than what is already in the drum sound library its down to its last handful of free space to make anything compelling. You leave it alone to run for a while, much longer than necessary, but who knows, maybe the ghost in the machine might pull something incredible and unforeseen out of its binary ass.

You come back and play what the program made, but the computer itself is so ancient that there was no space in it's memory to code a cue slider, so you have to listen to everything the software made to get to the interesting part. Several minutes later the moment of truth arrives after listening to numbing variations of the stock drum sounds and then in the last 20 seconds of the longest 5 minutes of your life it does it!! One single extra asynchronous beat mashed in.

And then it's over.



The only thing missing from the whole experience was a nice bucket of wind chimes and some vaguely sensual vocals ripped from the Turner library. If the Hal 9000 ever decided to host a dance party, this is what he would have come up with. BPM should not be mistaken for quality. The two aren't mutually exclusive, but they're more often than not pretty damn close to being so.

Cherish and Nurture Your Wanderlust

I read an interesting article through one of a bunch of second hand feeds that I sometimes peek through now and then and it talked about the value of boredom and the value of having space to let your mind wander. Technology can be great because it can allow you to do things you otherwise may never be able to try or even imagine possible. At the same time, filling every second of your waking life with it also reduces opportunities to reflect meaningfully, beyond the data points of entertainment and facts you digested or manipulated through technology, and imagine new things.

When you open up a box and read the manual you get ideas for what the thing is capable of and what you can now do with it and while you did not have those ideas before or did not know how to implement those ideas you didn't really imagine them as much as they were fed to you in parts and pieces, and sometimes in their entirety.



Imagination still takes practice and effort and time and while technology can make us all more capable and flexible people it can also limit the ability to imagine by replacing the time and resources spent imagining with technological tinkering and scripted production.

The thing that struck me the most though was the author's approach to children. It struck me as touching and I also felt an acute pain that was the feeling of never really experiencing that growing up, and now that I'm grown up moments like that can't really be fully enjoyed for a long list of reasons. At least not enjoyed yet. Maybe if I ever get married or something. Even then situations like that will probably be more of an ego shaded, priority differentiated, tug of war than anything else.

"We have a new ritual now, and it really has become my favorite part of the day. I put her to bed 15 minutes earlier than before. She crawls into bed and, instead of shushing her, I lie next to her and we just talk. She talks about things that happened that day, things she's worried about, things she's curious or thinking about. I listen and ask her questions. We laugh together. And our minds just wander."

I think, more than many things in life, I want that though I know I can't have it. Can you blame me for trying?

I firmly believe that my imaginative abilities have come primarily from the, sometimes, desperate desire to be someone, anyone, and anywhere in the world, but where I was growing up. I'm not going to retread it, but suffice to say I probably would have had a better childhood as a foster kid with no parents or homeless. Think of it as growing up from birth blind instead of going blind years after birth. Hopefully I'll get some sight back eventually and my dreams about the emerald city and the yellow brick road will be based on optimism instead of a desire to escape a prison of circumstance, history, and context.



In other news, I am creating the theme for the wordpress fiction site as we speak! Yes, I have two sets of hands.

///Ulrich Schnauss - "Wherever You Are" Wherever you are, whatever you're in, wherever you were, and everywhere you're not, Ulrich has composed a moment for you. This is my moment to take a breath before I'm pushed under again.

Small Victories

Life is like a fire breathing tiger at an Origami swap meet. All you want to do is trade bits of beautiful things with other people and then, descending from on high with no warning comes life, tearing people in half, exploding fire over everything you value, and using your favorite couch as a really big scratching post. I need more hours in my day. The good news is (did you see it yet? Seriously, look around for a second. Did you see it?) I fixed the footer. Yaaay. A small victory three days after the fact, but the point is I did it and it looks way better than it did. More legible, more sexy, more everything. So while the universe burns hotter than a gay man with gonorrhea inside a green house buying last minute flowers for his parents on their anniversary while figuring out how to explain the answering machine message he accidentally left them while high on lsd at a rave, I managed to accomplish something tangible. Bang. One goal down, 9000 to go.



On a completely unrelated note- no that's not true, it's semi-related- on a completely semi-related note, I'm trying to figure out how to master Wordpress. I was browsing some job listings and a few looked mighty tasty, but the job poster demanded a "mastery of Wordpress." That is about as vague a requirement as I have ever seen. That's like those listings that require a "mastery of Mac machines." Do they want me to be able to write applications for Macs or something? Do they want me to able to turn it on and navigate the interface? Or does mastery mean I must have owned one for several years? I bet it means that I have to dress like that guy who used to be in those Mac commercials when Mac was trying to justify their outrageous prices for marginal differences by making everyone who didn't own a Mac feel like they were being total assholes for not having the money to plunk down for one.

What is there to master in Wordpress? I guess I'm missing something, but I'll look around and see what the big deal is. Maybe there's more to it than using the interface that is essentially the same as blogger. Maybe there isn't and it means that I just have to go into the interview with the posture of someone who knows his shit. Or maybe it means I just have to sprinkle in some Wordpress jargon. Its probably the third thing. Pepper there ears with some sugar sweet tech talk. I should purchase some fake glasses too to make my face more approachable. Not that I look like an idiot, but I do look like I should be out in the wilderness firing a 24 inch chainsaw and smoking Marlboros (which is kind of the job I would like to do, but I don't live anywhere near any logging operations).

At any rate, I lost my train of thought. The thought of deforestation gives me boners. Well, just one boner over multiple time frames. Obviously. But, there was something else.

Oh, I got it. Nabbed it. The story site for my fiction is what I'm working on piecing together. Hopefully that'll be up sooner than later. I've got a story to tell you that I think you might like.

///Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Phenomena" When the White Stripes came out with their album Icky Thump a lot of critics said, "oh my God this is completely and totally awesome," but in my opinion the YYYs nailed a much ickier harder thumping sound the year before with their album; this track being one of my favorites on the whole thing. If the universe ever does catch fire and we're all going to die, I hope they play this song when the curtain comes up.

Completely Sidetracked

Okay, I got completely sidetracked, but look what I made in the meantime!



Worth the detour?

///B. Fleischmann - "Composure" Ride the notes all the way to your mattress and lay down your sleepy head.

get sorted

Well, I'm lost. I realized it today. Well actually I realized it yesterday when I went to bed at 5:30 in the morning. That was a pretty good indicator that I'm not really driving in any particular direction with any sort of conviction. On the other hand, it could be an indication that I'm driving in every direction with complete conviction. Either way the sum of detectable movement is a big fat zero.

Qualifier: it is a happy zero. I haven't accomplished nothing in my efforts to accomplish everything. I simply haven't produced anything measurable by fiscal standards, and who's really keeping track of that? Everyone, you say? Well I don't care all that much. Like Lady GaGa apparently said (I heard from a friend of a friend who read something who was told about the thing to read by a friend's friend) money is boring. The only reason why I want to make money is so that I can pay for things that will free me up to do other things. If food and housing were free, the only jobs I would do were the jobs I wanted to do and I wouldn't have to worry about getting paid because the jobs that I actually want to do are jobs that I would literally do for free. Seeing someone enjoy the product of your labor should, and for me actually is, so enjoyable that I rarely do the things I enjoy for money unless its necessary.

To get back to the point, I've been using my pen tablet to make things like this:



I'm not completely sure why. I used to doodle a lot in high school instead of learning stoichiometry and trigonometry. I suppose if I paid more attention I would be getting home from a 60,000 dollar job after doodling equations instead of sitting at home making pictures. I'm not sure I would make a trade though. I mean obviously it would be nice to have a pay check and a car and an apartment, but I'm not dead, I'm not homeless, and I'm not being starved at the moment so I suppose it's not all bad. I'd rather be able to dream and create than be able to dream and unable to creatively articulate.

And you know what else? I'll fix those images right now before I go to bed, because if I don't I'm going to end up putting it off until I'm on my death bed telling a priest that my only regret was not fixing the graphics on this page.

///Susumu Hirasawa - "Jouken Douji" If you thought Anime music was composed entirely of campy Japanese pop tunes and you haven't tried anything I've recommended by Kanno or Susumu, today should be the day you listen to a track that is all kinds of funky intricate and sexy. Like "really awesome piece of slick technology" sexy, not "anemic girl with plastic breasts" sexy. The bass line in this track is hotter than a lot of hip hop bass lines and from what I know of production (admittedly very little), I'd say the production value is higher than the norm for Anime music. Susumu Hirasawa delivers complexity in balance with beauty and gets it right more often than not.

Ladies and gentleman, if you please, I have solved religion.

First thing, (I understand if you don't particularly care, but I have to do this so that I don't forget because this also doubles as my change log) I still plan to replace the red bits still hanging out in the post headers and down next to the tags. They are out of place in the new scheme and quite frankly my skills have grown beyond those first efforts and they're kind of tacky. Not to flatter myself too hard, but who the hell else is going to?

Second thing is this: I have solved why religion is so fiercely defended. I know right? It was so obvious, but I couldn't understand before why a particularly nasty and irrational person I knew was so entrenched in their beliefs. Why were they so inclined to condemn behavior in others that they performed on a regular basis? Why did everything they say start with "if they were Godly people"? Why did different words come out of either side of their mouth every single day and somehow manage to avoid internal conflict?

And then it hit me!



Religion to this person, or at least the particular "Christian" doctrine they adopted was basically a hodge podge of the most comfortable elements in the Christian as it related to them and how they framed the world around them. Their conversion, or anyone's conversion, has nothing to do with miracles, but before I fly off to hell on a thunderbolt and a plume of fire and brimstone and "much gnashing of teeth" or however it goes, hear me out.

As much as the people who believe they're just fine treating people with respect and treating strangers with kindness and compassion and charitably is as much as some Christians say they are simply picking and choosing Jesus's nicer words and they are, apparently going to burn for it. Look a little bit closer at these nay sayers of congeniality and you can see them perpetrating the same behaviors, however with greater subtlety, and often not even that. That's when I realized every single person who has had some "religious" awakening wasn't suddenly seeing THE light. They were seeing A light.

What they would count as religion changing them is really them finally realizing what their ground state of being was. Basically: realizing who they already were. The reason why people defend religions to the death is because religion allows them to defend who they are. The guy who wants to go kill Muslims for Jesus says he is doing it for Jesus, but in his mind, maybe his subconscious mind, maybe not that deeply repressed, he is doing it because it is what he as a person wants to do. Jesus simply gives him an out. Even the people who "suffer" for their faith aren't really suffering for their faith. They are suffering because they've realized the kind of people they want to be and they are pursuing that being the same way a man who wants to smoke a cigarette smokes or a person who enjoys rock climbing goes and climbs rocks. For some of these people penance has intrinsic value in their lives because they want to be held accountable. They want to be rewarded with pain because the pain lends them meaning every Sunday.

Religion is like an old comfortable boot. You put it on and you wear it because it's comfortable to you. That's all. If you think as a husband you should be paid tribute by your wife and kids and they should wait on you hand and foot and defer to you at all times even though legislation in America has essentially made everyone equals, you'll adopt a framework that allows you to live that way. If someone brings you "God's" word and it says the man is awesome and women are second class and should do whatever you tell them to, you'll be on that wagon in no time flat. Do you have to confess Jesus as a savior? Small price to pay for total dominance, don't you think? So spout some nonsense and swear up and down by the ridiculous things you don't actually believe because what you're paying for is the peace of mind of knowing that you are justified in the things that matter to who you are as a person. It cuts the same way for other things too, but most glaringly within religion.

So, what else is new?

This:


The above is going to be the main thematic element in the hateitalready.blogspot.com site I'm planning. I thought to myself, "no one wants to read a blog that spends the entire time ragging on other things, especially things that some people really do like." It would be the same as being a forum troll except condensed to one black singularity of curmudgeonly voice. So, I have revamped the idea and I'm going to put a humorous spin on it to make it much more digestable. If there's one thing I learned from watching movies as a kid it was that a spoon full of sugar is fuggin tasty and will allow you to fly umbrellas when the wind is just right, and I intend to take that knowledge straight to the bank.

///Mathew Dear - "R + S"Tonight we'll ride and find gold in their eyes. It shines so bright. I must have it.

dear (______):

Dear Savage Garden:

You know that song you made called "I Want You?" Yeah that hit that almost made you into a one hit wonder. That one. So two minutes and forty seconds in, what the hell happened? I know tribal chanty beat breaks were all the rage, but putting one into that song makes about as much sense as female circumcision. Check minus.

dear (______):

Dear ESPN evening line up:

There are only so many news stories, I know, so could you stop retreading everything 12 times over. Less breadth. More depth. And no, having a channel for each thing is not giving the coverage greater depth; it's giving the coverage insanity inducing breadth with the benefit of being able to pick a flavor. K THNX.

Behold Again!!

Pchow Pchow, goes the Buck Rogers laser gun as I fire off good idea after great idea. Seriously though, I am just tired. While it's great to exercise my brain it also makes me tired, especially because the fridge has been particularly short on brain food and good scotch.

Check out that new banner! Is it or is it not the cats pj's. It counterbalances the chaos down that right side bar pretty nicely. I got rid of that text obstructing thing down at the bottom of each post too. See, I listen to you sometimes when I'm not arguing amongst my selves.



Speaking of arguments, I watched 500 Days of Summer recently. Great movie. Great writing in the movie is what I think made it so spectacular. The subtle bias toward the male pro-stagonist/underdog was very well done. It played off of the understood theme's in relationship movies and then flipped it quite handily on its head through- actually, hold on. I was going to talk about something else, but now I can't remember what.

Oh, the banner up there! Yes. So I might tweak it some more later on, and by later on I mean tomorrow. Just to help it blend more seamlessly. On second thought, scratch that. I think I may play up the difference to highlight and cut it off from the rest of the page to give the entire blog a more clearly defined personality instead of a mix mash of boarders and impressionistic pictures.

Ah, yes. Arguments. Today has struck me as something of a frustrating day. The two people I really want to talk to are not talking to me. Petty and self centered of me to say that right? Wrong! I am never wrong! You are wrong for even suggesting I may ever be wrong about anything! Mainly, I wonder what they're doing because I want to be a part of it, but I'm beginning to suspect that the role I thought I played in their lives is actually a tiny forgettable fraction. Or perhaps not so much forgettable as extremely occasion specific. I've niched myself. Or have I. The whole thing is confusing and the most frustrating thing about it all is that its probably almost entirely a product of differences in free time and my own insecurities. God damn it, just answer your phone and tell me you don't want to talk ever. That's what a nice person would do. Or maybe that's what an asshole would do. My interpersonal skills might be regressing, but the plus side is that my amateur psychology is progressing. No, wait, that might be a negative too.

I bet Kanye West thinks he's being a nice person every single time he opens his mouth (old I know). I wonder if he's having fun in India finding his soul. Ha, more like finding his soul's "dear john" letter! Pchow! Buck Rogers. Count it. Look out for the addition of more bells and whistles in the future. This place is always developing. Occasionally moping along like the progress of a blinking light around a string of Christmas lights still on in August of the following year, but like those lights we keep it changing.

///Jay-Z - "Empire State of Mind" maybe I'll move to NYC and seek my fortune there. Or even anywhere else in the state of New York. I think I'm out of options here. Either way, from where I stand the coasts feel like they're glittering.

Behold Yall

The Auralport

Bang! It's sort of up and running. It Still needs some minor tweaks and twists, but for the most part that will be the look. I feel good about where it's going.



I didn't get to redesigning the banner here, I know, but on the bright side I did manage to create a whole new layout over yonder at the nexus of poetry so it's not a total loss. In fact it's not even a major loss. If anything it's kind of like a 40/60 split decision win.

We'll find the time to redo this page's banner tomorrow for certain. That is a guarantee I can get behind. I hope I didn't guarantee that last time (that would put a serious dent in my truthiness).

///Mono - "Penguin Freud" I don't know if I told you, but this was the song I was listening to when the towers fell all those years ago.