I'll have to keep this post short, as I only have like an hour to write it. My computer's internet turns off at twelve, which used to be fine since before I'd just go downstairs and finish on my parent's computer. Only now they've placed the same restrictions on their computer, for some reason they're hell-bent on keeping me off the internet after 12:00 on weekdays.
Other than that, I've had a really really good weekend, as the title implies. Saturday I unexpectedly had my first guitar lesson. There were two other students and both his kids (at least one was, maybe the other was just a friend) in the room at the time, so it didn't feel much like a "private" lesson, and he didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know... but still, my first lesson! I get the impression he's not as "hands on" as some other teachers, there will still be a good amount of self-studying to be done, but I imagine he'll give me repertoire and technique to work on, and answer any questions I have. That's what music teachers do, isn't it? lol
I can't have a lesson this week, because I leave for Regionals on Thursday and won't be back until Saturday afternoon. So in two weeks I'd like to have mastered the basic chords he gave me and changing between them, maybe set them to a song or two. The guitar neck on my mom's guitar is a lot thicker than normal, which is part of why it feels so awkward to play, so I'll be looking to get my own sometime soon hopefully.
Later that day was work, then me and my brother saw Coraline. Great movie. In 3-D which was really a little unnecessary, but it didn't detract much from it. The artistry was amazing, I would love to see it again just for that. I mean, the story and characters were okay, but it was really a treat to look at and experience.
Sunday I went up and saw Rachel. We had an amazing day. Went to see the Rodin museum which was great, ate pizza, etc. It was seriously the best time I've had in a long time, and I can't wait to see her again, probably sometime next month for spring break.
Today I slept until four since the night prior I'd only had 2.5 hours of sleep, then the rest of the day I spent with the guitar.
So I'm feeling pretty great, though definitely not looking forward to returning to school and show and everythingUUUGG.
I've dropped my album. I'm not in the right frame of mind to make an album right now, I just don't have any good ideas, and I knew the rest of the songs were going to turn out like the first one, and I didn't want to waste my time.
Rachel was talking to me yesterday about how she feels like she's wasting her time in college. Her mother said, and she agrees, that some people think you go to college to grow up, but really all you're doing is prolonging your youth as long as you can. You go there to delay growing up. All she wants to do, the only thought she has for her future, is to raise a family. And college is keeping her from doing that. So I said why don't, maybe in another year, we get married. I mean, why not? People get married when they're eighteen. I don't know how we'd raise kids when we can barely support ourselves (if that turns out to be the case, which with us both in college seems pretty likely), but we wouldn't have to worry about that right away. She said let's see how this next year goes.
All this school year I've been thinking about how eager I am to get out of highschool and out on the road, being in a different city every month, playing shows in backwoods bars and getting into fights with drunk old people. It's a very appealing lifestyle to me. But in the end, it's probably not worth very much. The person I care about most wants to settle down and raise a family, and create more little persons I care about most. How much more fulfilling would that be than traveling and playing music for strangers? Damned if I know, the good thing is life will in all likelihood decide that for me. The way things usually go, I won't have any say in it at all.
Fortunately, all I have to worry about right at this moment is not flunking out of high school, not flunking out of college, and learning to play this guitar. It's kind of comforting in a way.
_Dr. M
Showing posts with label Rachel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rachel. Show all posts
Monday, February 16, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Friday the Thirteenth
Today wasn't a particularly unlucky day. I finally banged out what will be the opening track to the new album. The whole thing is going to be very unambitious. Just a few simple songs that repeat a bit and then end. I kind of figured it might be this way, since I'm so strapped for time and energy. I've been kind of out of it lately, and this week has been kind of frustrating since today was my only night off, and I had to say "no" to CVS in order to get it (they asked if I'd come in).
I hate having things to do. Why can't school just end already and why can't I not have to work in order to earn money. Why can't I just do what I want to do. Why can't life work that way. We all spend eighty percent of our lives doing what we'd rather not, and twenty percent dreading it. It's nice to have Heaven to look forward to. I guess.
I wish it were Sunday already. I'm kind of annoyed by how stagnant everything is. I can't seem to make any head way... but it's all my fault, really. I'm the one not doing anything.
This isn't a very happy post. Appropriate for the day, I guess. On a lighter note, I get to see my Rachel two days from now. She's about all I could think about all day.
I love her.
_Dr. M
I hate having things to do. Why can't school just end already and why can't I not have to work in order to earn money. Why can't I just do what I want to do. Why can't life work that way. We all spend eighty percent of our lives doing what we'd rather not, and twenty percent dreading it. It's nice to have Heaven to look forward to. I guess.
I wish it were Sunday already. I'm kind of annoyed by how stagnant everything is. I can't seem to make any head way... but it's all my fault, really. I'm the one not doing anything.
This isn't a very happy post. Appropriate for the day, I guess. On a lighter note, I get to see my Rachel two days from now. She's about all I could think about all day.
I love her.
_Dr. M
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Progress?
Well, the progress I was making Monday feels a little stunted now. I did finally learn today that I won't be able to stay at Jeff's house this weekend, so I'll only be seeing Rachel on Sunday. But I still haven't heard back from the guitar teacher, and I've made barely any progress in Logic. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, there's only so much I can do in the three hours between school and school show. I want to do more, but hey, I'm stuck being me. I'll have to make the best of it.
I wasn't looking forward to this weekend as much since I didn't know what I would be doing. But now that I know, and really it's not so bad that I won't be staying Monday since Rachel has class and I wouldn't have gotten to see her much anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing her Sunday. Then I have all Monday to get caught up with my album, since we don't have school.
Today and yesterday felt like straight-up spring, sprinkles of rain and everything. It was very nice, extremely nice, but it also made me really horny, which is weird. I kind of feel like a woman when I say that... men aren't usually turned on by environmental factors like that. At least I'm not.
Anyway, today I spent my one day off from school show at work, which was unexpected but nice seeing as it's MORE MONEYZZ HA HA. Never a bad thing.
So now! I need to hear back from the guitar teacher, I need to start my album, I need to get a bank account. That's about all I think. I wrote a song yesterday, and as usual I started wanting to write one thing, ended up writing something completely different, and still had something pretty good to work with. I'm trying to write a song for somebody to sing at the senior recital (which is just what it sounds like) which happens later this year. We'll see how that goes.
This week is PSSA testing, standardized shenanigans all PA schools have to put up with, but it's for eleventh grade only. I put in my time last year, so now all this week I get to sleep in an extra two hours. No English or photography for almost a whole week. Pretty good deal.
I know mostly I'm just blogging about what I'm doing every day, not so much my feelings or thoughts or anything. January I was in kind of a funk, and now I'm just chugging along, waiting for things to end, and for things to begin. It's not such a bad state to be in, really.
Westchester finally contacted me about auditioning for them. I don't want to.
I don't.
I probably will anyway. Seems to be the standard operating procedure in life.
_Dr. M
I wasn't looking forward to this weekend as much since I didn't know what I would be doing. But now that I know, and really it's not so bad that I won't be staying Monday since Rachel has class and I wouldn't have gotten to see her much anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing her Sunday. Then I have all Monday to get caught up with my album, since we don't have school.
Today and yesterday felt like straight-up spring, sprinkles of rain and everything. It was very nice, extremely nice, but it also made me really horny, which is weird. I kind of feel like a woman when I say that... men aren't usually turned on by environmental factors like that. At least I'm not.
Anyway, today I spent my one day off from school show at work, which was unexpected but nice seeing as it's MORE MONEYZZ HA HA. Never a bad thing.
So now! I need to hear back from the guitar teacher, I need to start my album, I need to get a bank account. That's about all I think. I wrote a song yesterday, and as usual I started wanting to write one thing, ended up writing something completely different, and still had something pretty good to work with. I'm trying to write a song for somebody to sing at the senior recital (which is just what it sounds like) which happens later this year. We'll see how that goes.
This week is PSSA testing, standardized shenanigans all PA schools have to put up with, but it's for eleventh grade only. I put in my time last year, so now all this week I get to sleep in an extra two hours. No English or photography for almost a whole week. Pretty good deal.
I know mostly I'm just blogging about what I'm doing every day, not so much my feelings or thoughts or anything. January I was in kind of a funk, and now I'm just chugging along, waiting for things to end, and for things to begin. It's not such a bad state to be in, really.
Westchester finally contacted me about auditioning for them. I don't want to.
I don't.
I probably will anyway. Seems to be the standard operating procedure in life.
_Dr. M
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Vanilla Bean
I stayed up quite literally all of Friday night recording a new song. The deadline for that competition I mentioned a while back reared its ugly head, and I had to put my entry in the mail Saturday morning. Well, I'm back in the saddle, if I may wax stupid for a moment. That is to say I'm definitely ready to start recording again. I used Garageband this go-around, but I'm ready to start with Logic and maybe even finish an album by the end of the month. I wanted to start today (which is really Saturday, not Sunday) but maybe it's a little late.
The song I made is an instrumental, with a lot of contrasting sections. It sort of became a tribute to Joy Electric, my favorite band since I was eleven.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pp2mlp
You can download it there if you get to the link in time. I think it stops working after only a few days.
I'm so excited! I don't know why I waited so long. The album is going to be a lot of instrumentals like this one, only simpler and more rhythmic. I want to stop writing so I can get started! Ah, it's good to be motivated!
I wonder if there's any pizza left downstairs.
Me and Khai officially switched the name of our band to Twilight March. I like that name a whole hell of a lot more than Napenthi.
I went to see Rachel's play today (Saturday). She was the props coordinator. There weren't too many props in it, but hey, I'll take any excuse to see her. I drove down with her father, mother, and sister. It was a series of one-act plays, four of them, and it was... interesting. I don't know, unless there's a good story, characters I care about, or some kind of clear message, I just don't have much appreciation for straight drama. Two of them I liked (the one about two people falling in love and the one about two old people talking about ducks), one of them I didn't like (the one about a dysfunctional family -GROAN), and one of them was just confusing (I won't bother describing it).
The love one and the dysfunctional one were illustrations of universal themes anyone could connect with, first love and infidelity. That I got. But the problem was, both scenes were as generic and banal as you can get. Think of any scene where two people unexpectedly fall in love, or where a woman is trying to get her husband to confess to cheating, and you'll have these scenes. They had nothing new to say. The ducks one was extremely well acted (but way too long), and relied completely on snappy, clever dialogue and subtle humor. I enjoyed it the most, but... let's just say I'm not going to remember it fifty years from now when I'm old and gray.
Anyway, it was nice seeing Rachel and it got me thinking about plays I myself would like to write some time. Maybe I still will.
AH! Goodnight.
_Dr. M
The song I made is an instrumental, with a lot of contrasting sections. It sort of became a tribute to Joy Electric, my favorite band since I was eleven.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pp2mlp
You can download it there if you get to the link in time. I think it stops working after only a few days.
I'm so excited! I don't know why I waited so long. The album is going to be a lot of instrumentals like this one, only simpler and more rhythmic. I want to stop writing so I can get started! Ah, it's good to be motivated!
I wonder if there's any pizza left downstairs.
Me and Khai officially switched the name of our band to Twilight March. I like that name a whole hell of a lot more than Napenthi.
I went to see Rachel's play today (Saturday). She was the props coordinator. There weren't too many props in it, but hey, I'll take any excuse to see her. I drove down with her father, mother, and sister. It was a series of one-act plays, four of them, and it was... interesting. I don't know, unless there's a good story, characters I care about, or some kind of clear message, I just don't have much appreciation for straight drama. Two of them I liked (the one about two people falling in love and the one about two old people talking about ducks), one of them I didn't like (the one about a dysfunctional family -GROAN), and one of them was just confusing (I won't bother describing it).
The love one and the dysfunctional one were illustrations of universal themes anyone could connect with, first love and infidelity. That I got. But the problem was, both scenes were as generic and banal as you can get. Think of any scene where two people unexpectedly fall in love, or where a woman is trying to get her husband to confess to cheating, and you'll have these scenes. They had nothing new to say. The ducks one was extremely well acted (but way too long), and relied completely on snappy, clever dialogue and subtle humor. I enjoyed it the most, but... let's just say I'm not going to remember it fifty years from now when I'm old and gray.
Anyway, it was nice seeing Rachel and it got me thinking about plays I myself would like to write some time. Maybe I still will.
AH! Goodnight.
_Dr. M
Monday, January 19, 2009
Districts, Rachel's birthday, Napenthi
Been a while since the last update! Right now it is snowing outside and it's very pretty. It's been a very cold weekend, which I like. I like how there's never anybody outside, all you have to do is step out your front door to be in complete and utter solitude.
So here's the story of the last five days. On Thursday morning me, my chorus teacher, and the tenor who made District choir drove up to Southern Lehigh where rehearsals were taking place. I liked the guest director who led the group a lot, with these festivals it can be a little hit or miss, but this guy I really liked. He was an excellent conductor, had a good personality, and really made you care about the music, which is the most important thing. People had prepared the music pretty well for the festival so in general we had two very good concerts Friday and Saturday. We got to have them in this nice big church with a real pipe organ for us to sing along with. I'll be getting a CD with Saturday's concert, and I'll probably post some of the tracks for you to hear.
As for the re-audition for regionals (which is the next level up), I lucked out and they picked a piece for the audition which I had already performed at another festival, so I had a pretty good audition and I made regionals easy. Now I have music for that to prepare in three weeks, so that will be fun.
Thinking about it almost made me want to be a choir director again, at a high school or college. Luckily that feeling didn't last long.
Saturday evening and Sunday I got to be with Rachel again, which of course was very nice. She came back for the weekend for her birthday. She didn't have a very good birthday, in fact it was really quite lame. Sunday for a party we went to her brother's house, where her brother and father watched a football game, her mother sort of lurked (she's that kind of person), and her brother and sister tried not to be bored to death. The two of us walked the dog, played with some blocks, and argued about the gift I gave her. Wednesday last week I went to the book store with my father to get her a book. I couldn't find what I was really looking for so I bought her an art book about optical illusions and visual deception. It's a very good book, but she claimed I was thinking more of myself when I bought it (because apparently I like that kind of thing more than she does). What's funny is I thought I was just buying her a good book.
No presents at all (except what I gave her) to unwrap, a tiny ice cream cake without any candles, we didn't even sing to her or anything. I don't even know if anybody else besides me and her had any cake.
Well anyway, her family is in general pretty insensitive and tend to regard each other with tepid indifference at all times. I'm always trying to tell her that, that her family is fucking weird, but she refuses to see it until something like this happens.
Back to the book. Me and Rachel have a long history of her not liking anything I buy her. She claims I don't listen to her, that even her room mate at college knows what she'd like better than I do. Last Christmas, I got her jam, a Bible with anime illustrations, and a wind chime. She didn't like any of it. But I had reasons! I got her jam because I knew how much she liked toast, she was always telling me how much she liked toast, so what goes better with toast than jam. And it was even special fancy jam. I knew she liked anime, and she didn't have a Bible, and it was a little corny but I thought maybe she'd like a combination of the two. And I thought the wind chime matched the decorations in her bedroom. I remember her telling me she disliked wind chimes, but a single tiny bell at the end hardly qualifies is as a "chime", it's more like a mobile than anything (especially if its indoors, hence no wind).
But the gift flopped hard anyway. I think she should feel lucky to get anything, I mean, it's pretty rude to complain about something somebody buys you no matter how close you are. Especially a nice big full-color book that obviously wasn't from the bargain bin. It sure is a lot nicer than what, say, her brother bought her, which was nothing. Oh well, I guess from now on I should just go with more obvious things, things I know she'll like. But it's so boring! I hate boring things.
But of course later in the evening we kissed and made up (and out) (ha ha j/k). She said at least the book will be a good distraction for me when she's busy with something and can't lavish me with the attention I so readily deserve.
She left this morning, and I look forward to seeing her again, hopefully around Valentine's Day.
If you're wondering what Napenthi is, it's the name of my new band. Well, sort of. I met with Khai the guitarist today to try and get something a little bit organized. We ironed out what songs we are going to prepare for a possible live performance on the first in two weeks (death doom destruction). He talks like he's really serious about this and knows how to play. I have my hopes, and my doubts, but there's no reason to give up before you start. Today I'm going to prepare practice tracks for him, just bass drums and chords, so when we meet this weekend he'll have his parts down slightly so we can see if we actually have something or not. I'm not going to make any judgments on the potential of this project until we've both had time to practice. Napenthi is a botched spelling of the word Nepenthe, which is a mythological drug of forgetfulness. I may need some Nepenthe after this week.
This week being school show auditions and all. I've been trying to let my voice rest yesterday and today, since it was pretty well tired after singing all day Thursday and Friday. Tomorrow is a half day, we get out at like noon (for the end of the semester), and then we'll have to come back for auditions at three. During that time I'm going to practice the song and make sure I can still sing it. It is very high, mind you. I'm a little anxious to have it over with. With any luck I won't get a good part and I won't have to do the show, or I'll get the lead. One or the other would be ideal. I kind of hope the directors don't read this blog.
That's all for now. I think I'm going to go watch the snow.
_Dr. M
So here's the story of the last five days. On Thursday morning me, my chorus teacher, and the tenor who made District choir drove up to Southern Lehigh where rehearsals were taking place. I liked the guest director who led the group a lot, with these festivals it can be a little hit or miss, but this guy I really liked. He was an excellent conductor, had a good personality, and really made you care about the music, which is the most important thing. People had prepared the music pretty well for the festival so in general we had two very good concerts Friday and Saturday. We got to have them in this nice big church with a real pipe organ for us to sing along with. I'll be getting a CD with Saturday's concert, and I'll probably post some of the tracks for you to hear.
As for the re-audition for regionals (which is the next level up), I lucked out and they picked a piece for the audition which I had already performed at another festival, so I had a pretty good audition and I made regionals easy. Now I have music for that to prepare in three weeks, so that will be fun.
Thinking about it almost made me want to be a choir director again, at a high school or college. Luckily that feeling didn't last long.
Saturday evening and Sunday I got to be with Rachel again, which of course was very nice. She came back for the weekend for her birthday. She didn't have a very good birthday, in fact it was really quite lame. Sunday for a party we went to her brother's house, where her brother and father watched a football game, her mother sort of lurked (she's that kind of person), and her brother and sister tried not to be bored to death. The two of us walked the dog, played with some blocks, and argued about the gift I gave her. Wednesday last week I went to the book store with my father to get her a book. I couldn't find what I was really looking for so I bought her an art book about optical illusions and visual deception. It's a very good book, but she claimed I was thinking more of myself when I bought it (because apparently I like that kind of thing more than she does). What's funny is I thought I was just buying her a good book.
No presents at all (except what I gave her) to unwrap, a tiny ice cream cake without any candles, we didn't even sing to her or anything. I don't even know if anybody else besides me and her had any cake.
Well anyway, her family is in general pretty insensitive and tend to regard each other with tepid indifference at all times. I'm always trying to tell her that, that her family is fucking weird, but she refuses to see it until something like this happens.
Back to the book. Me and Rachel have a long history of her not liking anything I buy her. She claims I don't listen to her, that even her room mate at college knows what she'd like better than I do. Last Christmas, I got her jam, a Bible with anime illustrations, and a wind chime. She didn't like any of it. But I had reasons! I got her jam because I knew how much she liked toast, she was always telling me how much she liked toast, so what goes better with toast than jam. And it was even special fancy jam. I knew she liked anime, and she didn't have a Bible, and it was a little corny but I thought maybe she'd like a combination of the two. And I thought the wind chime matched the decorations in her bedroom. I remember her telling me she disliked wind chimes, but a single tiny bell at the end hardly qualifies is as a "chime", it's more like a mobile than anything (especially if its indoors, hence no wind).
But the gift flopped hard anyway. I think she should feel lucky to get anything, I mean, it's pretty rude to complain about something somebody buys you no matter how close you are. Especially a nice big full-color book that obviously wasn't from the bargain bin. It sure is a lot nicer than what, say, her brother bought her, which was nothing. Oh well, I guess from now on I should just go with more obvious things, things I know she'll like. But it's so boring! I hate boring things.
But of course later in the evening we kissed and made up (and out) (ha ha j/k). She said at least the book will be a good distraction for me when she's busy with something and can't lavish me with the attention I so readily deserve.
She left this morning, and I look forward to seeing her again, hopefully around Valentine's Day.
If you're wondering what Napenthi is, it's the name of my new band. Well, sort of. I met with Khai the guitarist today to try and get something a little bit organized. We ironed out what songs we are going to prepare for a possible live performance on the first in two weeks (death doom destruction). He talks like he's really serious about this and knows how to play. I have my hopes, and my doubts, but there's no reason to give up before you start. Today I'm going to prepare practice tracks for him, just bass drums and chords, so when we meet this weekend he'll have his parts down slightly so we can see if we actually have something or not. I'm not going to make any judgments on the potential of this project until we've both had time to practice. Napenthi is a botched spelling of the word Nepenthe, which is a mythological drug of forgetfulness. I may need some Nepenthe after this week.
This week being school show auditions and all. I've been trying to let my voice rest yesterday and today, since it was pretty well tired after singing all day Thursday and Friday. Tomorrow is a half day, we get out at like noon (for the end of the semester), and then we'll have to come back for auditions at three. During that time I'm going to practice the song and make sure I can still sing it. It is very high, mind you. I'm a little anxious to have it over with. With any luck I won't get a good part and I won't have to do the show, or I'll get the lead. One or the other would be ideal. I kind of hope the directors don't read this blog.
That's all for now. I think I'm going to go watch the snow.
_Dr. M
Sunday, January 11, 2009
It Is Complete (kind of)
You're now seeing me post for the first time from my new computer, in my room. It's so exciting! I have most of the programs I want all installed and everything, and some of my music is on it. Here's hoping we don't run into another disaster that will have us reinstalling the operating system, again. It seems to be working okay, with one of two minor gaffs here or there.
Rachel was supposed to leave yesterday, but the snow and inclement weather made her wait until today. Yesterday I saw the Blue Man Group at the Sovereign Center with my brother Dan, the tickets were birthday gifts. I have wanted to see them since I was very little, and so I was pretty psyched. I enjoyed it, it had a definite "rock concert" feel to it, they had a band that played with them and everything. The spectacle of it was great, the lights, how perfectly timed it all was, that in and of itself made it worth going. It was very humorous, and the music was okay. I loved the parts where the Blue Men were drumming by themselves on their weird instruments, then when the band came in it was kind of... well, a little generic. They had a vocalist and everything, but the songs weren't anything special. I would have preferred it to be more just the blue men, and props and percussion and stuff. I think I would like the stage show more, which apparently is very different from their touring show. I think they added the more traditional instruments to make it more accessible and sell more tickets. Maybe I'll get to see the non-touring version in New York sometime.
I know I didn't really want to get into politics in this blog, I mean, who wants to hear my dumb uninformed opinions anyway, but I have been thinking about it a bit lately. I think I'm an anarchist. I know that's a pretty extreme thing to say, and I don't plan on blowing up any buses or anything, but I'm starting to feel a little bit like maybe people actually would be capable of governing themselves, if they were allowed. Maybe all of this governing administered by the rich ruling class isn't as necessary as we all seem to think it is. I've been reading about it a little bit on good ol' wikipedia, and I think I'd classify myself as an "anarcho-capatilist", one whose views are "based on a belief in the freedom to own private property, a rejection of any form of governmental authority or intervention, and the upholding of the competitive free market as the main mechanism for social interaction." I don't know, it makes sense to me. My main point is in simplifying life and society, not forcing constraints or laws on anybody and allowing them to think for themselves. I guess this view is classified as "extreme libertarianism" but I actually think of it more like "extreme conservatism", where everything, utilities, public services like police and hospitals, are all completely privately owned and allowed to trade freely with no constraints by any outside force. My particular strain of anarchy isn't against all order or organization of any kind, which seems to be the stereotypical anarchist view, just against compulsory ones.
I'll be mulling that over for a while, in the meantime I have a new computer with which to make amazing music. If I had any immediate inspirations for doing so I wouldn't be here writing this blog, I'd be making music. The fact is I'm not sure where my sound is going to go once I start up again. I know I need practice with Logic before undertaking any serious endeavors. I also know when I do start again I'd like to be working on an album. Making Pogo, the short psychotic album I made over the summer, was a lot of fun, because I was thinking about more than one song at a time. I got to think about things a little more thematically, about how it would all fit together and flow. That was with a stripped-back album which used the exact same sounds in every song. A fully-realized electronic album with a lot of variety and instrumentation will hopefully be the same experience except more so, which I'm very excited about.
I'm starting to feel a little excited about my music again, something I haven't really felt since October. Inspiration comes and goes, I think it's coming back.
Anyways, Rachel left today. I met an old friend for lunch, a rare thing for me. I knew her from a summer theater camp we both used to go to. Originally it was going to be me her and someone else, but the third person never showed. Have you ever noticed how sometimes, different people make us a completely different person when we're around them? They bring out different aspects of our personality. This girl, whose name also happens to be Rachel (it's a virus), really brings out my intellectual side. Something of which I wish I had a little more to offer, I don't exactly read very much, or retain information like some people do. My Rachel really brings out all sides of my personality (good and bad), one of the reasons I love her.
I got to accompany my Rachel back to college, which was nice. It's weird, whenever I drive to Philly and see that skyline (something I've done quite a bit lately, between trips to UArts and to UPenn), it always feels like I'm coming home. It feels so familiar, and not really welcoming, but still like home. I don't know what it is, but it feels more like home than Reading does. I think it's my subconscious realizing that that's where I'm going to college, and it's a reflection of my desperation to get there and get out of here. I am pretty desperate to leave home. Which is weird, I mean by some standards my childhood has been positively ideal, and I love my family dearly. I'm just so ready to get out there on my own. At least I think I am. We'll see if that's actually the case.
I miss Rachel already, but not too bad since she'll be home next weekend for her birthday. =D Then I'll probably go up to see her on or around Valentine's Day.
Here's a list of things I should be doing at this very moment but am not:
1. Looking for my acceptance letter from UArts and with it the two letters we have to mail in
2. The history project that will be three days late
3. Preparing District music
4. Making sheet music for my guitarist
5. A remix for a musician that I said I would do but am having trouble doing it
That last one I feel especially bad about. I've wanted to do a remix for this guy for ages, but now that I have the opportunity sitting in front of me, I'm at a loss. I don't know what to do. Seriously, zero real ideas. To undertake a heavy creative project like this I need time, I need to not be worrying about my computer crashing and the various things I want to do with it, I need to not be in the midst of learning a new program and new music for these stupid chorus festivals. I could half-ass something in GB or I could just tell him it's not a good time. Maybe he'd prefer the former. Well in any case he's probably reading this (he's like that) so hopefully he'll tell me what I should do. Hi Nikmis!
I've rambled on for long enough I think. Not looking forward to school tomorrow, am looking forward to Districts (this week Wednesday-Saturday) being over with.
Bu-bye.
_Dr. M
Rachel was supposed to leave yesterday, but the snow and inclement weather made her wait until today. Yesterday I saw the Blue Man Group at the Sovereign Center with my brother Dan, the tickets were birthday gifts. I have wanted to see them since I was very little, and so I was pretty psyched. I enjoyed it, it had a definite "rock concert" feel to it, they had a band that played with them and everything. The spectacle of it was great, the lights, how perfectly timed it all was, that in and of itself made it worth going. It was very humorous, and the music was okay. I loved the parts where the Blue Men were drumming by themselves on their weird instruments, then when the band came in it was kind of... well, a little generic. They had a vocalist and everything, but the songs weren't anything special. I would have preferred it to be more just the blue men, and props and percussion and stuff. I think I would like the stage show more, which apparently is very different from their touring show. I think they added the more traditional instruments to make it more accessible and sell more tickets. Maybe I'll get to see the non-touring version in New York sometime.
I know I didn't really want to get into politics in this blog, I mean, who wants to hear my dumb uninformed opinions anyway, but I have been thinking about it a bit lately. I think I'm an anarchist. I know that's a pretty extreme thing to say, and I don't plan on blowing up any buses or anything, but I'm starting to feel a little bit like maybe people actually would be capable of governing themselves, if they were allowed. Maybe all of this governing administered by the rich ruling class isn't as necessary as we all seem to think it is. I've been reading about it a little bit on good ol' wikipedia, and I think I'd classify myself as an "anarcho-capatilist", one whose views are "based on a belief in the freedom to own private property, a rejection of any form of governmental authority or intervention, and the upholding of the competitive free market as the main mechanism for social interaction." I don't know, it makes sense to me. My main point is in simplifying life and society, not forcing constraints or laws on anybody and allowing them to think for themselves. I guess this view is classified as "extreme libertarianism" but I actually think of it more like "extreme conservatism", where everything, utilities, public services like police and hospitals, are all completely privately owned and allowed to trade freely with no constraints by any outside force. My particular strain of anarchy isn't against all order or organization of any kind, which seems to be the stereotypical anarchist view, just against compulsory ones.
I'll be mulling that over for a while, in the meantime I have a new computer with which to make amazing music. If I had any immediate inspirations for doing so I wouldn't be here writing this blog, I'd be making music. The fact is I'm not sure where my sound is going to go once I start up again. I know I need practice with Logic before undertaking any serious endeavors. I also know when I do start again I'd like to be working on an album. Making Pogo, the short psychotic album I made over the summer, was a lot of fun, because I was thinking about more than one song at a time. I got to think about things a little more thematically, about how it would all fit together and flow. That was with a stripped-back album which used the exact same sounds in every song. A fully-realized electronic album with a lot of variety and instrumentation will hopefully be the same experience except more so, which I'm very excited about.
I'm starting to feel a little excited about my music again, something I haven't really felt since October. Inspiration comes and goes, I think it's coming back.
Anyways, Rachel left today. I met an old friend for lunch, a rare thing for me. I knew her from a summer theater camp we both used to go to. Originally it was going to be me her and someone else, but the third person never showed. Have you ever noticed how sometimes, different people make us a completely different person when we're around them? They bring out different aspects of our personality. This girl, whose name also happens to be Rachel (it's a virus), really brings out my intellectual side. Something of which I wish I had a little more to offer, I don't exactly read very much, or retain information like some people do. My Rachel really brings out all sides of my personality (good and bad), one of the reasons I love her.
I got to accompany my Rachel back to college, which was nice. It's weird, whenever I drive to Philly and see that skyline (something I've done quite a bit lately, between trips to UArts and to UPenn), it always feels like I'm coming home. It feels so familiar, and not really welcoming, but still like home. I don't know what it is, but it feels more like home than Reading does. I think it's my subconscious realizing that that's where I'm going to college, and it's a reflection of my desperation to get there and get out of here. I am pretty desperate to leave home. Which is weird, I mean by some standards my childhood has been positively ideal, and I love my family dearly. I'm just so ready to get out there on my own. At least I think I am. We'll see if that's actually the case.
I miss Rachel already, but not too bad since she'll be home next weekend for her birthday. =D Then I'll probably go up to see her on or around Valentine's Day.
Here's a list of things I should be doing at this very moment but am not:
1. Looking for my acceptance letter from UArts and with it the two letters we have to mail in
2. The history project that will be three days late
3. Preparing District music
4. Making sheet music for my guitarist
5. A remix for a musician that I said I would do but am having trouble doing it
That last one I feel especially bad about. I've wanted to do a remix for this guy for ages, but now that I have the opportunity sitting in front of me, I'm at a loss. I don't know what to do. Seriously, zero real ideas. To undertake a heavy creative project like this I need time, I need to not be worrying about my computer crashing and the various things I want to do with it, I need to not be in the midst of learning a new program and new music for these stupid chorus festivals. I could half-ass something in GB or I could just tell him it's not a good time. Maybe he'd prefer the former. Well in any case he's probably reading this (he's like that) so hopefully he'll tell me what I should do. Hi Nikmis!
I've rambled on for long enough I think. Not looking forward to school tomorrow, am looking forward to Districts (this week Wednesday-Saturday) being over with.
Bu-bye.
_Dr. M
Sunday, January 4, 2009
New Horizons
What a mushy title. Oh well, I couldn't think of a better one.
These past few days have been great. Friday me and Rachel went to the mall and I became acquainted with the joys of spending money. I now have a copy of Pan's Labyrinth (from the bargain bin) which I'm really excited about seeing, I have an interesting new calendar featuring some paintings by H.R. Giger, and I have two new pairs of pants which are probably just about the most amazing pants I've ever owned. My art teacher told the class about them, about how wonderful they are, and man is he right. They're lined with flannel, so it feels like you're walking around in pajamas all day, it's soooooo comfortable and warm. It really is all about the simple joys.
Saturday we slept and watched TV, all day. We were going to meet up with a friend, but it didn't work out.
I've been friends with this girl named Misty for years, since I was in like elementary school. Her grandparents used to be my next door neighbors. Our relationship has gone through many different phases over the years, but lately we've hardly spoke to each other. Nobody's fault really, just that it can be hard making time for somebody when everything else gets in the way. Also, my relationship with Rachel means exclusive friendships with other women has been something I've shied away from. It's not like we're married, but in a way it kind of is, and I don't really trust myself not to create problems where they don't belong. I feel guilty about letting our relationship slide though, I don't want to lose her as a friend. I was excited about seeing her on Saturday, but it turns out she had to spend the day with her father whom she didn't see much over break. I didn't mind of course, but hopefully I'll get to spend some time with her soon.
Her father's a really cool dude. He's an amazing guitarist, in all likelihood I'll be starting guitar lessons with him soon.
In other news, my parents ordered a copy of Logic for me. Logic is the music production software I bought my computer in order to run. It's similar to GarageBand except a million times more functional. It's a professional program that people in Hollywood are using, I'm psyched about having it to learn and record with.
Also, there's this crazy kid I've known since freshman year named Khai, who I happened to see at the mall. He told me he plays the guitar, and we might be starting a band (the two of us). A sort of pop-punk/electronica thing is the idea right now, it's still just talk but I hope that actually comes to fruition. We might get signed and start touring and be the next Greenday, and now you know before anybody else. Congratulations.
Later.
_Dr. M
These past few days have been great. Friday me and Rachel went to the mall and I became acquainted with the joys of spending money. I now have a copy of Pan's Labyrinth (from the bargain bin) which I'm really excited about seeing, I have an interesting new calendar featuring some paintings by H.R. Giger, and I have two new pairs of pants which are probably just about the most amazing pants I've ever owned. My art teacher told the class about them, about how wonderful they are, and man is he right. They're lined with flannel, so it feels like you're walking around in pajamas all day, it's soooooo comfortable and warm. It really is all about the simple joys.
Saturday we slept and watched TV, all day. We were going to meet up with a friend, but it didn't work out.
I've been friends with this girl named Misty for years, since I was in like elementary school. Her grandparents used to be my next door neighbors. Our relationship has gone through many different phases over the years, but lately we've hardly spoke to each other. Nobody's fault really, just that it can be hard making time for somebody when everything else gets in the way. Also, my relationship with Rachel means exclusive friendships with other women has been something I've shied away from. It's not like we're married, but in a way it kind of is, and I don't really trust myself not to create problems where they don't belong. I feel guilty about letting our relationship slide though, I don't want to lose her as a friend. I was excited about seeing her on Saturday, but it turns out she had to spend the day with her father whom she didn't see much over break. I didn't mind of course, but hopefully I'll get to spend some time with her soon.
Her father's a really cool dude. He's an amazing guitarist, in all likelihood I'll be starting guitar lessons with him soon.
In other news, my parents ordered a copy of Logic for me. Logic is the music production software I bought my computer in order to run. It's similar to GarageBand except a million times more functional. It's a professional program that people in Hollywood are using, I'm psyched about having it to learn and record with.
Also, there's this crazy kid I've known since freshman year named Khai, who I happened to see at the mall. He told me he plays the guitar, and we might be starting a band (the two of us). A sort of pop-punk/electronica thing is the idea right now, it's still just talk but I hope that actually comes to fruition. We might get signed and start touring and be the next Greenday, and now you know before anybody else. Congratulations.
Later.
_Dr. M
Friday, January 2, 2009
seriously, 2009
Who am I kidding? I wanted to really open up emotionally in this blog, not just chart my day-to-day events, and what better time than the ending of the year to do a shmaultzy retrospective?
Here's looking forward, and backwards.
At the beginning of last year I was smack dab in the middle of my eleventh grade year. I wasn't doing too well in school but trying to ignore it, I think. Looking ahead, I felt like my entire life was about to end. Rachel was leaving! It felt like a crushing weight strapped to my chest that grew heavier every day. Rachel was leaving for college and I wouldn't see her for months at a time! Good lord, I was depressed.
That spring was crazy. All at once, I had the chorus festivals which were amazing (all four of them), and I had Poetry Out Loud (more about that later), and I had school show, and prom, and all the club trips we were taking, and it all just came at me at once and I was more than a little overwhelmed. I'm promising myself not to let that happen again this year, but I'm not doing anything to prevent it either. If anything I'm setting myself up for an even worse spring.
But it all came and went and I lived. In the end I got to say that I am an all-state musician, something I never thought I'd get to say, and that I have been with the same girl for two years. School show was just ridiculous, but there were parts of it that were fun, as there always are. Most importantly, the school year ended and there would be only one left.
The summer was really pretty bad. Looking back on it, it was not good at all. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I did not have a good summer. Rachel was working as a lifeguard, which meant I didn't get to see her as much as I wanted to. Allow me to describe my state at this point as flat-out panic. Rachel's leaving! She's going away! What am I going to do? Then, to make everything worse, a whole three week chunk of the summer was gone, just like that, in this retarded college preparation program my mother forced me to go to. It was a state-run program where you leave for two weeks the summer after your sophomore year, then three weeks after your junior year. You go to live at one of the state schools and learn about college. That first two weeks in o seven were spent mostly learning how not to be fat, because most of the counselors were at college learning physical education. These three weeks in o eight were supposedly more academic, we attended college courses like we were in college, except without the drinking and sex. The courses were a little bogus, the grades were worth nothing, the only nice thing was I found two or three pretty cool people to hang around with. If we completed these two sessions we'd get money for college, if we went to one of the fourteen state schools. I wasn't seriously planning on going to a state school and my mother knew it. This became her way of punishing me for the misery I'd put her through with my grades throughout the years.
And I've finally come to terms with just how much of a waste those three weeks were. I didn't want to admit it before, because these particular three weeks were smack dab in the middle of the last summer I had with Rachel before she left, and I just had to make some sense of it, I just had to convince myself there was a reason. But there wasn't. The counselors at the program were trying to cut a check. The kids were going through the motions so they'd maybe get some cash for college. And three weeks later I had learned nothing, gained nothing, and it's three weeks I'll never get back, three weeks I could have spent with Rachel, and you know, I don't think I'll ever be okay with that. Rationalize, trivialize all you want, those three weeks were important and now they're gone. That whole period of my life is gone, it ended when Rachel left, and there was no reason to cut it short like that.
But it's almost kind of funny to think about, I really thought my relationship with Rachel might end when she left, but no. No, it's still going strong, stronger than ever in fact, and looking back it's not much of a surprise. But still, having her there with me in school, every day, that was really something. I do miss it.
Something else I missed over the summer was my grandparent's visiting for the week. My father's parents. Talk about your mixed feelings. If I were to be brutally honest with myself, I'd admit that I have all the respect and obligatory love in the world for them, but I've never been close to them and I never will be. They moved to Tennessee before I was born and we didn't get to see them very much while I was growing up. When we did... well... I was a little kid you see, and it's hard for little kids to see things much past a basic sense of "fun" and "not fun". Seeing my mom's mom in the Adirondacks, zipping through the woods on an ATV and having camp fires, that was "fun". Going down to that miserable hot little cabin in Tennessee with my dad's parents where everything smelled funny and every time I was anywhere near my grandmother she'd find something to yell at me about and judge me about, that was "not fun". Call me selfish, inconsiderate, disrespectful, but the truth is the truth and I'm not sorry at all I missed their visit this summer.
My brother, he has all sorts of happy memories at their cabin. He went there on his own for three weeks every summer when he was a kid. They loved him to death. I don't know what they thought when they thought of me, but for the life of me I can't remember a single kind word, a single... well... they did smile at me occasionally I guess. I don't know. they were very old, your relationship with your grandparents never runs much deeper than milk and cookies. But I don't think they liked me growing up. Not that I was the world's greatest kid.
Maybe things would be different now. Maybe I should try connecting with them. Who am I kidding. My grandfather has been of very ill health lately, I'm not sure he was ever completely convinced I was his grandson, but now he's not even sure if his oldest son is married. So there goes that. My grandmother's still all there, women tend to be, but I still don't really want to get to know her. Every time part of my family goes to see them I'm in the part that doesn't. I don't know if I've seen them more than once since I've been in high school.
But I digress (majorly). This fall was good. Classes were a breeze, Rachel and I talked at length every night. School seems a little bit like a completely different place now without Rachel and the other seniors, which I actually had predicted. Now we're the old ones in the school, it's weird to think that every single upper classman I knew freshman year has now graduated, it really is like a whole other school. I have a strong indifference to just about everybody there, I don't think I'll exactly be in tears come graduation.
So, that's where we are. Looking ahead... I think the hardest thing about this next season will be keeping a clear head. Making sure of my surroundings... knowing what's up next and what I need to prepare for. This break has been a waste as they always are, but hopefully things will start rolling when school starts again. Things will start rolling... more like spiral out of control. It's the traditional second-term festivity.
I really really don't want to do school show this year. Every bone in my body aches. I don't want to do it so so badly. Every year I do it, every year I don't have a good time and I think the show is terrible, every minute I spend doing it I spend wishing I were doing other things. Think of how much more time I could have if I just skipped it, for music, for work, for life. Everything would be so much easier if I could just skip it. Why don't I, you ask?
You don't understand.
For the past three years, school show has been part of my very existence. It's that big chunk of time I waste every single February, March and April. It's just there. If it were not there... what... what would I do? I'll tell you what I'd do, I'd hide my face in shame every time I passed by someone who was in it, I'd lose sleep every night thinking about what I've done, what I've missed out on... my senior show. I have to do it. It's my last year. I've done it every year so far... three years... How many of my class mates can say that? Three, maybe four. I don't know why I feel so obliged to finish out something I hate doing, but there it is.
I'm doing school show.
Honestly I wish the auditorium and everybody involved in the show would all fall through some sort of temporal rift... just for the next three months... maybe they could spend it somewhere nicer than here. And warmer.
Looking past this spring, I've got a whole summer to look forward to. Then, hopefully, college. You know I'm really glad I'm doing this blog. This is an important time in my life, I'm going to enjoy having this to look back on. I just hope I actually keep at it.
There are in fact a few changes I want to make for this year. I want to take my classes a little more seriously. No more skipping, anything. Every morning I have to make a reason to drag myself out of bed, like "oh maybe I'll skip piano today", "we're not doing anything in music major", etc. No more of that. I'm getting out of bed because there's school and that's that. I'm going to bed earlier too. Sleep won't be much of a problem after this quarter ends because I'll be switching to seventh period chorus which means no more 7:30 AM period one, and I'm not taking piano this semester, which means I can lazily drift into school some time between 8:14 and 9:00. But it won't be a slippery slope, I will indeed wake up on time and get to school when I need to.
And I want to make sure I'm getting stuff done, as always. So there, there are some resolutions if you like that term. Nothing unreasonable, strictly practical and doable.
Okay, there's a fairly shmaultzy retrospective for you. So here's to another year of big changes, failures, successes, and hopefully lots and lots of music and sex.
-Dr. M
Here's looking forward, and backwards.
At the beginning of last year I was smack dab in the middle of my eleventh grade year. I wasn't doing too well in school but trying to ignore it, I think. Looking ahead, I felt like my entire life was about to end. Rachel was leaving! It felt like a crushing weight strapped to my chest that grew heavier every day. Rachel was leaving for college and I wouldn't see her for months at a time! Good lord, I was depressed.
That spring was crazy. All at once, I had the chorus festivals which were amazing (all four of them), and I had Poetry Out Loud (more about that later), and I had school show, and prom, and all the club trips we were taking, and it all just came at me at once and I was more than a little overwhelmed. I'm promising myself not to let that happen again this year, but I'm not doing anything to prevent it either. If anything I'm setting myself up for an even worse spring.
But it all came and went and I lived. In the end I got to say that I am an all-state musician, something I never thought I'd get to say, and that I have been with the same girl for two years. School show was just ridiculous, but there were parts of it that were fun, as there always are. Most importantly, the school year ended and there would be only one left.
The summer was really pretty bad. Looking back on it, it was not good at all. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I did not have a good summer. Rachel was working as a lifeguard, which meant I didn't get to see her as much as I wanted to. Allow me to describe my state at this point as flat-out panic. Rachel's leaving! She's going away! What am I going to do? Then, to make everything worse, a whole three week chunk of the summer was gone, just like that, in this retarded college preparation program my mother forced me to go to. It was a state-run program where you leave for two weeks the summer after your sophomore year, then three weeks after your junior year. You go to live at one of the state schools and learn about college. That first two weeks in o seven were spent mostly learning how not to be fat, because most of the counselors were at college learning physical education. These three weeks in o eight were supposedly more academic, we attended college courses like we were in college, except without the drinking and sex. The courses were a little bogus, the grades were worth nothing, the only nice thing was I found two or three pretty cool people to hang around with. If we completed these two sessions we'd get money for college, if we went to one of the fourteen state schools. I wasn't seriously planning on going to a state school and my mother knew it. This became her way of punishing me for the misery I'd put her through with my grades throughout the years.
And I've finally come to terms with just how much of a waste those three weeks were. I didn't want to admit it before, because these particular three weeks were smack dab in the middle of the last summer I had with Rachel before she left, and I just had to make some sense of it, I just had to convince myself there was a reason. But there wasn't. The counselors at the program were trying to cut a check. The kids were going through the motions so they'd maybe get some cash for college. And three weeks later I had learned nothing, gained nothing, and it's three weeks I'll never get back, three weeks I could have spent with Rachel, and you know, I don't think I'll ever be okay with that. Rationalize, trivialize all you want, those three weeks were important and now they're gone. That whole period of my life is gone, it ended when Rachel left, and there was no reason to cut it short like that.
But it's almost kind of funny to think about, I really thought my relationship with Rachel might end when she left, but no. No, it's still going strong, stronger than ever in fact, and looking back it's not much of a surprise. But still, having her there with me in school, every day, that was really something. I do miss it.
Something else I missed over the summer was my grandparent's visiting for the week. My father's parents. Talk about your mixed feelings. If I were to be brutally honest with myself, I'd admit that I have all the respect and obligatory love in the world for them, but I've never been close to them and I never will be. They moved to Tennessee before I was born and we didn't get to see them very much while I was growing up. When we did... well... I was a little kid you see, and it's hard for little kids to see things much past a basic sense of "fun" and "not fun". Seeing my mom's mom in the Adirondacks, zipping through the woods on an ATV and having camp fires, that was "fun". Going down to that miserable hot little cabin in Tennessee with my dad's parents where everything smelled funny and every time I was anywhere near my grandmother she'd find something to yell at me about and judge me about, that was "not fun". Call me selfish, inconsiderate, disrespectful, but the truth is the truth and I'm not sorry at all I missed their visit this summer.
My brother, he has all sorts of happy memories at their cabin. He went there on his own for three weeks every summer when he was a kid. They loved him to death. I don't know what they thought when they thought of me, but for the life of me I can't remember a single kind word, a single... well... they did smile at me occasionally I guess. I don't know. they were very old, your relationship with your grandparents never runs much deeper than milk and cookies. But I don't think they liked me growing up. Not that I was the world's greatest kid.
Maybe things would be different now. Maybe I should try connecting with them. Who am I kidding. My grandfather has been of very ill health lately, I'm not sure he was ever completely convinced I was his grandson, but now he's not even sure if his oldest son is married. So there goes that. My grandmother's still all there, women tend to be, but I still don't really want to get to know her. Every time part of my family goes to see them I'm in the part that doesn't. I don't know if I've seen them more than once since I've been in high school.
But I digress (majorly). This fall was good. Classes were a breeze, Rachel and I talked at length every night. School seems a little bit like a completely different place now without Rachel and the other seniors, which I actually had predicted. Now we're the old ones in the school, it's weird to think that every single upper classman I knew freshman year has now graduated, it really is like a whole other school. I have a strong indifference to just about everybody there, I don't think I'll exactly be in tears come graduation.
So, that's where we are. Looking ahead... I think the hardest thing about this next season will be keeping a clear head. Making sure of my surroundings... knowing what's up next and what I need to prepare for. This break has been a waste as they always are, but hopefully things will start rolling when school starts again. Things will start rolling... more like spiral out of control. It's the traditional second-term festivity.
I really really don't want to do school show this year. Every bone in my body aches. I don't want to do it so so badly. Every year I do it, every year I don't have a good time and I think the show is terrible, every minute I spend doing it I spend wishing I were doing other things. Think of how much more time I could have if I just skipped it, for music, for work, for life. Everything would be so much easier if I could just skip it. Why don't I, you ask?
You don't understand.
For the past three years, school show has been part of my very existence. It's that big chunk of time I waste every single February, March and April. It's just there. If it were not there... what... what would I do? I'll tell you what I'd do, I'd hide my face in shame every time I passed by someone who was in it, I'd lose sleep every night thinking about what I've done, what I've missed out on... my senior show. I have to do it. It's my last year. I've done it every year so far... three years... How many of my class mates can say that? Three, maybe four. I don't know why I feel so obliged to finish out something I hate doing, but there it is.
I'm doing school show.
Honestly I wish the auditorium and everybody involved in the show would all fall through some sort of temporal rift... just for the next three months... maybe they could spend it somewhere nicer than here. And warmer.
Looking past this spring, I've got a whole summer to look forward to. Then, hopefully, college. You know I'm really glad I'm doing this blog. This is an important time in my life, I'm going to enjoy having this to look back on. I just hope I actually keep at it.
There are in fact a few changes I want to make for this year. I want to take my classes a little more seriously. No more skipping, anything. Every morning I have to make a reason to drag myself out of bed, like "oh maybe I'll skip piano today", "we're not doing anything in music major", etc. No more of that. I'm getting out of bed because there's school and that's that. I'm going to bed earlier too. Sleep won't be much of a problem after this quarter ends because I'll be switching to seventh period chorus which means no more 7:30 AM period one, and I'm not taking piano this semester, which means I can lazily drift into school some time between 8:14 and 9:00. But it won't be a slippery slope, I will indeed wake up on time and get to school when I need to.
And I want to make sure I'm getting stuff done, as always. So there, there are some resolutions if you like that term. Nothing unreasonable, strictly practical and doable.
Okay, there's a fairly shmaultzy retrospective for you. So here's to another year of big changes, failures, successes, and hopefully lots and lots of music and sex.
-Dr. M
Thursday, January 1, 2009
2009! oh boy
I suppose the appropriate phrase here would be "Happy new year!"
So, here it goes.
Happy new year!
I haven't posted in a while. Because it's so extremely important, here's a rundown of my entire week so far, best I can remember.
Monday: Worked. From five to nine.
Tuesday: Spent the day with Rachel at my house. We mostly just hung around and watched TV. This would have been a pretty blah day, except I was with the person with whom I am in love. That has a way of making everything good.
Wednesday: Worked. Then we had New Years. We were going to meet up with our friend Ashley (she was in Rachel's class, she now attends a university which I am again forgetting the name of =P) and knew we wanted to go out somewhere. The three of us aren't exactly down on the whole Reading party scene (bump, da-bump DA bump, da-bump DA bump) so we decided to go up to the Pagoda. Mount Penn is the pint-size mountain range lining one side of our fair city. On top of it sits the Pagoda, Reading's symbol as of the last twenty years or so. It's a random piece of Asian architecture, originally a failed bed and breakfast, I believe. Anyway, every new year's they do fireworks near it for the city to watch, so we hung out right where the action was. It was a nice local shin-dig, the radio station was there, the mayor popped in at the end. It was extremely, extremely cold, but other than that the three of us had a very good time.
I will never ever in my life stop being amazed at the way sound works, and the way we perceive it. The boom of the fireworks echoed off the city, creating this tremendous roar that sounded like it was coming from everywhere at once.
Today I was at Rachel's house. We watched more TV, specifically the Twilight Zone. I love that show.
I have to wash the dishes tonight, and work on a song I have to do for this thing. Maybe I'll explain more about it later.
That's all for now.
-Dr. M
P.S. My sole new year's resolution is to post in this blog. Every day or almost every day. That should be fun.
So, here it goes.
Happy new year!
I haven't posted in a while. Because it's so extremely important, here's a rundown of my entire week so far, best I can remember.
Monday: Worked. From five to nine.
Tuesday: Spent the day with Rachel at my house. We mostly just hung around and watched TV. This would have been a pretty blah day, except I was with the person with whom I am in love. That has a way of making everything good.
Wednesday: Worked. Then we had New Years. We were going to meet up with our friend Ashley (she was in Rachel's class, she now attends a university which I am again forgetting the name of =P) and knew we wanted to go out somewhere. The three of us aren't exactly down on the whole Reading party scene (bump, da-bump DA bump, da-bump DA bump) so we decided to go up to the Pagoda. Mount Penn is the pint-size mountain range lining one side of our fair city. On top of it sits the Pagoda, Reading's symbol as of the last twenty years or so. It's a random piece of Asian architecture, originally a failed bed and breakfast, I believe. Anyway, every new year's they do fireworks near it for the city to watch, so we hung out right where the action was. It was a nice local shin-dig, the radio station was there, the mayor popped in at the end. It was extremely, extremely cold, but other than that the three of us had a very good time.
I will never ever in my life stop being amazed at the way sound works, and the way we perceive it. The boom of the fireworks echoed off the city, creating this tremendous roar that sounded like it was coming from everywhere at once.
Today I was at Rachel's house. We watched more TV, specifically the Twilight Zone. I love that show.
I have to wash the dishes tonight, and work on a song I have to do for this thing. Maybe I'll explain more about it later.
That's all for now.
-Dr. M
P.S. My sole new year's resolution is to post in this blog. Every day or almost every day. That should be fun.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Benjamin Button
I spent all of yesterday with Rachel, I won't go too in depth about everything we did, but it was a good time. We watched an old favorite of hers, When Harry Met Sally. I thought it was a very good film, very classic and timeless. Anyway, today we saw in theaters The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. On the list of things I think I could do really well if I were only slightly different, besides a defense attorney, an architect, etc., is a movie reviewer. So indulge me for a moment.
Walking in I didn't know what to expect. I saw absolutely no press about it beforehand, no trailers, no commercials, I only knew the basic premise (a man born old and aging backwards, growing younger while everyone else grows older) and thought it might be something I'd enjoy. It was of course a very excellent film. The performances were strong, the cinematography was breath-taking, however I have one basic complaint which keeps it from being a favorite of mine, probably of anybody's.
In this film, the vast range of human emotions, motivations, and experiences possible with a story like this are all buried underneath the technicalities of it all. The entire length of the first act of the film we're being asked to emotionally connect with a CGI puppet. Don't get me wrong, there are certain scenes where he might as well be a real person, the technology is so picture-perfect. Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly so consistent as it would have to have been. Regardless, instead of pondering the plight of this child whose been so prematurely deprived of his youth, I was comparing him to Gollum (his croaky frog voice didn't help this at all). Computer graphics will never substitute for a real actor, despite what modern Hollywood might like us to think. At least, not in this context. In a fantasy world like Harry Potter, I can believe that blue house-elf with the giant eyes is really warning Harry about the fate of the magical world. In a completely CGI film like Wall-E, I can believe that adorable tiny robot is saving the planet. In the super-realistic, nostalgic world of the late nineteenth century, a computer avatar sticks out like a freaking whopper of a sore thumb.
I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when many scenes later I squinted at our hero and was satisfied that he is now finally being portrayed by a real person. That's when I discovered, to my dismay, that this person was Brad Pitt. Great. Now instead of comparing Benjamin Button to Gollam, I was comparing him to every other role I've seen Brad Pitt play (a danger with any film that uses actors we're all too familiar with). And throughout the rest of the film, I simply couldn't stop myself from obsessively doing the math in regards to his age (okay, he started at eighty, he's now twenty-five, so he should look sixty-five...), again and again as he gradually grew younger/older. I found out later Rachel had the exact same problem. The make-up is very good, and Pitt's acting for the different ages is spot-on, but given the basic premise of the film this fact-checking proved extremely distracting.
You see the flaw? You could have a really heart-felt, engaging story, but all the technicalities both in premise and in execution hide it all beneath the surface. That's what keeps this from being a truly great film. The director and actors all obviously tried so very hard to make ends meet, to make this story make sense, so that the humanity of the story, what makes it so special, ended up getting pulled through the wringer in the process.
It is a runway show of extremely gifted film making, it is not a heart-felt story.
I enjoyed the beauty of the film, I enjoyed the expertise employed, but ultimately it is very forgettable, which is sad, since it could have been so good.
Now, I say all that, but of course there were some human elements to the movie, it had some very good moments, and I did enjoy it quite a bit. This is just an overall impression.
A lot of reviews mention the source from whence it came, F. Scott Fitzgerald's original short story, but only briefly, at least from what I read. What's funny is, I think that's the answer right there. If they hadn't diverged so drastically from their source, instead of another Forrest Gump (the similarities are indeed endless) we could have had something much more important. Fitzgerald's story has many different aspects to it, it starts out a cartoonish farce, but develops into an extremely sad portrayal of an oddly relatable character. Fitzgerald's Benjamin Button, despite his very unusual circumstances, has all the same human flaws and characteristics related to aging that we see in ourselves. I believe Fitzgerald was trying to get us to look at our lives in another way, to see how we give things up and treat the ones we love so foolishly, and only want what we want and are never content where we are.
The movie lost track of this interpretation entirely somewhere along the way. What you see on screen is simply the story of a man with an unfortunate, incurable disease that isolates him from the rest of the world merely because of the way he looks. If he was born say, a leper, or a dwarf, his life would largely have been the same. When he looks old he is otherwise a normal toddler, with a normal toddler's experiences and mind. When he looks young he has the wisdom and experience of an old man. When you really think about it, how much should it actually matter how he looks? If he and everybody else in the movie weren't so wrapped up in his appearance, he could have had a completely normal, mundane life. The concept of the film is still a good one, it is still a very good story to be told (as this theme of the separation between mind and body is an interesting one), but it's not at all the same story as the one F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote.
In the original short story, Benjamin Button was born an old man, literally an old man, a cigar-smoking, encyclopedia-reading old man. As he grows older, or should I say younger, he gets married to a woman who is much younger than he is, and for all intents and purposes she is married to an older man. Then he is younger still, and she grows older, and he finds he wants to go to parties and dance with other young women, even though he's forty. His wife acts her age, on the other hand, and he loses interest in her. He continues growing younger, and decides to go off to college, something he couldn't do earlier when he was older. He starts off a freshman and champion of the university's football team, but as he continues to grow younger by his senior year he is much too small to play, and on top of that his studies seem to be too advanced for him, as his mind is also growing younger. After graduating he moves in with his son, who wants nothing to do with him, and wants his own father to call him "uncle", to save face in front of visitors. Benjamin vainly tries re-joining the military, but of course can't for now he is a small child, and eventually becomes only concerned with the walls of his crib, and his walks in the park, until he can't remember anything at all, and it all fades into darkness.
When we're young we're continually longing to be older, when we're old we're continually longing to be younger. When Benjamin Button is older he in fact quite happy, but as he grows younger, he becomes more and more unhappy as he longs for his age again. He is in effect getting what every elderly person would give everything for, the chance to be young and beautiful, but it ends up costing him everything.
It's a much colder, biting story. Very critical and almost a little hopeless. But it would have made for a much better film, though Hollywood does love it's drippy love stories such as the one it's turned this into. Though it may make less logical sense, like how on earth Benjamin's mother delivered a 5'8" man complete with beard, it makes for a more unique and meaningful story, most importantly one devoid of CGI puppets and make-up more advanced than the stuff adorning Orson Wells in Citizen Kane.
Anyway, looking forward to another week off. Lots to do though, busy busy busy. I'll be sure to keep in touch.
-Dr. M
Walking in I didn't know what to expect. I saw absolutely no press about it beforehand, no trailers, no commercials, I only knew the basic premise (a man born old and aging backwards, growing younger while everyone else grows older) and thought it might be something I'd enjoy. It was of course a very excellent film. The performances were strong, the cinematography was breath-taking, however I have one basic complaint which keeps it from being a favorite of mine, probably of anybody's.
In this film, the vast range of human emotions, motivations, and experiences possible with a story like this are all buried underneath the technicalities of it all. The entire length of the first act of the film we're being asked to emotionally connect with a CGI puppet. Don't get me wrong, there are certain scenes where he might as well be a real person, the technology is so picture-perfect. Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly so consistent as it would have to have been. Regardless, instead of pondering the plight of this child whose been so prematurely deprived of his youth, I was comparing him to Gollum (his croaky frog voice didn't help this at all). Computer graphics will never substitute for a real actor, despite what modern Hollywood might like us to think. At least, not in this context. In a fantasy world like Harry Potter, I can believe that blue house-elf with the giant eyes is really warning Harry about the fate of the magical world. In a completely CGI film like Wall-E, I can believe that adorable tiny robot is saving the planet. In the super-realistic, nostalgic world of the late nineteenth century, a computer avatar sticks out like a freaking whopper of a sore thumb.
I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when many scenes later I squinted at our hero and was satisfied that he is now finally being portrayed by a real person. That's when I discovered, to my dismay, that this person was Brad Pitt. Great. Now instead of comparing Benjamin Button to Gollam, I was comparing him to every other role I've seen Brad Pitt play (a danger with any film that uses actors we're all too familiar with). And throughout the rest of the film, I simply couldn't stop myself from obsessively doing the math in regards to his age (okay, he started at eighty, he's now twenty-five, so he should look sixty-five...), again and again as he gradually grew younger/older. I found out later Rachel had the exact same problem. The make-up is very good, and Pitt's acting for the different ages is spot-on, but given the basic premise of the film this fact-checking proved extremely distracting.
You see the flaw? You could have a really heart-felt, engaging story, but all the technicalities both in premise and in execution hide it all beneath the surface. That's what keeps this from being a truly great film. The director and actors all obviously tried so very hard to make ends meet, to make this story make sense, so that the humanity of the story, what makes it so special, ended up getting pulled through the wringer in the process.
It is a runway show of extremely gifted film making, it is not a heart-felt story.
I enjoyed the beauty of the film, I enjoyed the expertise employed, but ultimately it is very forgettable, which is sad, since it could have been so good.
Now, I say all that, but of course there were some human elements to the movie, it had some very good moments, and I did enjoy it quite a bit. This is just an overall impression.
A lot of reviews mention the source from whence it came, F. Scott Fitzgerald's original short story, but only briefly, at least from what I read. What's funny is, I think that's the answer right there. If they hadn't diverged so drastically from their source, instead of another Forrest Gump (the similarities are indeed endless) we could have had something much more important. Fitzgerald's story has many different aspects to it, it starts out a cartoonish farce, but develops into an extremely sad portrayal of an oddly relatable character. Fitzgerald's Benjamin Button, despite his very unusual circumstances, has all the same human flaws and characteristics related to aging that we see in ourselves. I believe Fitzgerald was trying to get us to look at our lives in another way, to see how we give things up and treat the ones we love so foolishly, and only want what we want and are never content where we are.
The movie lost track of this interpretation entirely somewhere along the way. What you see on screen is simply the story of a man with an unfortunate, incurable disease that isolates him from the rest of the world merely because of the way he looks. If he was born say, a leper, or a dwarf, his life would largely have been the same. When he looks old he is otherwise a normal toddler, with a normal toddler's experiences and mind. When he looks young he has the wisdom and experience of an old man. When you really think about it, how much should it actually matter how he looks? If he and everybody else in the movie weren't so wrapped up in his appearance, he could have had a completely normal, mundane life. The concept of the film is still a good one, it is still a very good story to be told (as this theme of the separation between mind and body is an interesting one), but it's not at all the same story as the one F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote.
In the original short story, Benjamin Button was born an old man, literally an old man, a cigar-smoking, encyclopedia-reading old man. As he grows older, or should I say younger, he gets married to a woman who is much younger than he is, and for all intents and purposes she is married to an older man. Then he is younger still, and she grows older, and he finds he wants to go to parties and dance with other young women, even though he's forty. His wife acts her age, on the other hand, and he loses interest in her. He continues growing younger, and decides to go off to college, something he couldn't do earlier when he was older. He starts off a freshman and champion of the university's football team, but as he continues to grow younger by his senior year he is much too small to play, and on top of that his studies seem to be too advanced for him, as his mind is also growing younger. After graduating he moves in with his son, who wants nothing to do with him, and wants his own father to call him "uncle", to save face in front of visitors. Benjamin vainly tries re-joining the military, but of course can't for now he is a small child, and eventually becomes only concerned with the walls of his crib, and his walks in the park, until he can't remember anything at all, and it all fades into darkness.
When we're young we're continually longing to be older, when we're old we're continually longing to be younger. When Benjamin Button is older he in fact quite happy, but as he grows younger, he becomes more and more unhappy as he longs for his age again. He is in effect getting what every elderly person would give everything for, the chance to be young and beautiful, but it ends up costing him everything.
It's a much colder, biting story. Very critical and almost a little hopeless. But it would have made for a much better film, though Hollywood does love it's drippy love stories such as the one it's turned this into. Though it may make less logical sense, like how on earth Benjamin's mother delivered a 5'8" man complete with beard, it makes for a more unique and meaningful story, most importantly one devoid of CGI puppets and make-up more advanced than the stuff adorning Orson Wells in Citizen Kane.
Anyway, looking forward to another week off. Lots to do though, busy busy busy. I'll be sure to keep in touch.
-Dr. M
Friday, December 26, 2008
Post-Xmas
This Christmas was a real surprise. I wasn't expecting very much, but I ended up getting a few of the best gifts I've ever gotten. We woke up pretty late, around eleven, and enjoyed each others company for a little while until Rachel joined us around noon. I hung out with her, we exchanged gifts (got me a lunch kettle, with Spongebob Squarepants on it), it was nice. Then my brother Jeff and his wife Amy joined us (shortly after Rachel had to leave to be with her family), and then we all gave each other our gifts and had a very good day.
I had given Jeff and Amy a list of CDs I wanted earlier in the month, for a Christmas list, figuring they were the most likely to come through in this area. When Amy handed me my gift -six CD-shaped packages all wrapped and tied together- I got that "intestines falling out of your butt" feeling (doesn't anyone else get that?). They got me almost every Beck CD I didn't have (which was everything except The Information)!! Beck has been one of my favorite artists lately, and I'd heard a bunch of these songs before, but now I have them all in CD form. I was expecting to listen to them all at once right in a row... but I never got past Mellow Gold. I put it on, played it, then played it again... I've played it probably five times since yesterday. It's so amazing!! I love every song. It's so fresh, so spontaneous. Anyway, now my expectations are unrealistically high for the rest of the albums which I'll slowly be making my way through in the next few days.
My mom got me the computer chair I wanted, which is awesome. So it ended up being a really great Christmas.
My brother assembled my computer yesterday, and started working out the software. See, my computer is a little... "special needs". It's hardware made for Windows that's running Mac osx on it. The day after Mac started running on Intel it was hacked and this was made possible, no longer do you have to pay for incredibly over-priced hardware that's completely un-upgradeable in order to have your Mac operating system. I need a Mac computer to run Logic, the music recording program I will soon be upgrading to. But I didn't want to pay a thousand dollars for that stupid huge fugly computer screen with everything built into it, a lot of which I don't need, nor did I want another sardine-can mini mac desktop, which can't run as fast and doesn't have the space I need. So this was the solution.
It requires hacking and general renegadery (don't install any updates -they'll find you!), but as far as I knew going in, as soon as Mac was installed, I would have a normal, stable computer just like anybody else's. So far we've had problems at every turn. Getting Mac onto it to begin with was a chore. Now there are still a lot of kinks that have to be worked out. Every time I want to plug something into a USB port I have to restart the computer. It won't have internet capabilities anytime in the immediate future (so for now, you are still reading what I type from the family computer downstairs). These are things that can and will be fixed, but let me just say I don't have such a great feeling about this. I wanted a stable computer that will last me... so far ol' Frankenstein's Macintosh chilling there on my desk isn't quite cutting it. Dan assures me it will be fine, it will work out... just don't install any updates!!
I'll let you know how that goes. In the meantime today I saw a movie with Rachel and her family- Marley and Me, a movie about a dog and the lives of the people who own him. I don't know, I'm not much of an animal person. I mean, let's get real... it is just a dog, there's only so much heart-wrenching drama you can get out of situations surrounding a dog's life. I like dogs fine, but to me, they're animals... animals is animals is animals. They're great companions for lonely or troubled people, me I'll take actual human companionship any day. The movie basically came out and said at the end, "Dogs make you feel good, therefor they are better than people". That kind of message never sits well with me.
Then I had work, which was long and horrible.
I wish I had had more time to spend with just Rachel... but luckily I believe I will be doing plenty of that tee-morrow. So I better get to bed!
Pray for me and Frankenstein's Macintosh.
-Dr. M
I had given Jeff and Amy a list of CDs I wanted earlier in the month, for a Christmas list, figuring they were the most likely to come through in this area. When Amy handed me my gift -six CD-shaped packages all wrapped and tied together- I got that "intestines falling out of your butt" feeling (doesn't anyone else get that?). They got me almost every Beck CD I didn't have (which was everything except The Information)!! Beck has been one of my favorite artists lately, and I'd heard a bunch of these songs before, but now I have them all in CD form. I was expecting to listen to them all at once right in a row... but I never got past Mellow Gold. I put it on, played it, then played it again... I've played it probably five times since yesterday. It's so amazing!! I love every song. It's so fresh, so spontaneous. Anyway, now my expectations are unrealistically high for the rest of the albums which I'll slowly be making my way through in the next few days.
My mom got me the computer chair I wanted, which is awesome. So it ended up being a really great Christmas.
My brother assembled my computer yesterday, and started working out the software. See, my computer is a little... "special needs". It's hardware made for Windows that's running Mac osx on it. The day after Mac started running on Intel it was hacked and this was made possible, no longer do you have to pay for incredibly over-priced hardware that's completely un-upgradeable in order to have your Mac operating system. I need a Mac computer to run Logic, the music recording program I will soon be upgrading to. But I didn't want to pay a thousand dollars for that stupid huge fugly computer screen with everything built into it, a lot of which I don't need, nor did I want another sardine-can mini mac desktop, which can't run as fast and doesn't have the space I need. So this was the solution.
It requires hacking and general renegadery (don't install any updates -they'll find you!), but as far as I knew going in, as soon as Mac was installed, I would have a normal, stable computer just like anybody else's. So far we've had problems at every turn. Getting Mac onto it to begin with was a chore. Now there are still a lot of kinks that have to be worked out. Every time I want to plug something into a USB port I have to restart the computer. It won't have internet capabilities anytime in the immediate future (so for now, you are still reading what I type from the family computer downstairs). These are things that can and will be fixed, but let me just say I don't have such a great feeling about this. I wanted a stable computer that will last me... so far ol' Frankenstein's Macintosh chilling there on my desk isn't quite cutting it. Dan assures me it will be fine, it will work out... just don't install any updates!!
I'll let you know how that goes. In the meantime today I saw a movie with Rachel and her family- Marley and Me, a movie about a dog and the lives of the people who own him. I don't know, I'm not much of an animal person. I mean, let's get real... it is just a dog, there's only so much heart-wrenching drama you can get out of situations surrounding a dog's life. I like dogs fine, but to me, they're animals... animals is animals is animals. They're great companions for lonely or troubled people, me I'll take actual human companionship any day. The movie basically came out and said at the end, "Dogs make you feel good, therefor they are better than people". That kind of message never sits well with me.
Then I had work, which was long and horrible.
I wish I had had more time to spend with just Rachel... but luckily I believe I will be doing plenty of that tee-morrow. So I better get to bed!
Pray for me and Frankenstein's Macintosh.
-Dr. M
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
'Twas the Night Before... yeah
These past two days it's really started to feel a little more like Christmas. Yesterday was the big party we throw with the *mother says I shouldn't use real name* family. My mother has been friends with Aunt Sue (not a blood relative, but might as well be) since college, and my brother and I and her kids have grown up much closer than I am to any of my real cousins. Her daughters are all grown up, and married with children. We started this tradition of having everyone over for caroling every Christmas season, and yesterday was this year's party. Let's see if I can count all of the kids who were over...
Margie and her husband Joel have five kids, three boys and two girls. Becka has twins, a boy and a girl. Julie has one child. That's eight kids who all crowded into my house yesterday. Aunt Sue's oldest son Paul was on his way but broke down, that would have been another set of twins had he made it. Craziness! So many little kids.
Aunt Sue's two youngest, Andy and Josh (Andy is two years older than me, Josh is four years older than me) were very close to my brother and I through childhood. Andy recently graduated from a culinary arts program and is going to be a chef, and couldn't make it yesterday. Josh works for a security firm in da hood, he's already been shot at and everything. He was over briefly yesterday before leaving with Joel to have coffee with the other married men.
I'm not sure why I'm writing all of this (probably for my sake, just to make sure I remember all of it). Anyway Rachel was over as well, so I enjoyed myself somewhat, despite the noise and confusion. The cat went nuts, for some reason my mother was surprised. Singing Christmas carols is always fun as well.
Today I had work, but then in the evening I joined Rachel's extended family for their annual Christmas Eve party. I enjoy seeing them, they're pretty fun. Much more fun than her immediate family, I'm not sure how that worked out.
So I'm pretty well in the spirit, especially because I got my first gift yesterday in the mail. EEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT CAME!!!! Now my brother just has to finish assembling it and hacking the motherboard so it can run Mac. I guess it's safe to say I'm pretty excited.
Anyway, I hope you, whoever you are, wherever you are, are having a very nice holiday season. Happy birthday Jesus, another year older, though I suppose that must not mean much to you.
-Dr. M
Margie and her husband Joel have five kids, three boys and two girls. Becka has twins, a boy and a girl. Julie has one child. That's eight kids who all crowded into my house yesterday. Aunt Sue's oldest son Paul was on his way but broke down, that would have been another set of twins had he made it. Craziness! So many little kids.
Aunt Sue's two youngest, Andy and Josh (Andy is two years older than me, Josh is four years older than me) were very close to my brother and I through childhood. Andy recently graduated from a culinary arts program and is going to be a chef, and couldn't make it yesterday. Josh works for a security firm in da hood, he's already been shot at and everything. He was over briefly yesterday before leaving with Joel to have coffee with the other married men.
I'm not sure why I'm writing all of this (probably for my sake, just to make sure I remember all of it). Anyway Rachel was over as well, so I enjoyed myself somewhat, despite the noise and confusion. The cat went nuts, for some reason my mother was surprised. Singing Christmas carols is always fun as well.
Today I had work, but then in the evening I joined Rachel's extended family for their annual Christmas Eve party. I enjoy seeing them, they're pretty fun. Much more fun than her immediate family, I'm not sure how that worked out.
So I'm pretty well in the spirit, especially because I got my first gift yesterday in the mail. EEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT CAME!!!! Now my brother just has to finish assembling it and hacking the motherboard so it can run Mac. I guess it's safe to say I'm pretty excited.
Anyway, I hope you, whoever you are, wherever you are, are having a very nice holiday season. Happy birthday Jesus, another year older, though I suppose that must not mean much to you.
-Dr. M
Friday, December 19, 2008
Rachel's Home!!
So, Rachel came home yesterday, or actually two days ago. Yesterday was the first I saw her. We hung out in school, I didn't have a lot of classes to go to. I was thrilled to see her for the first time in two weeks, even though she said she was "disappointed in my appearance". She can't believe she's the only one who notices when I don't shave. Anyway, she seemed really excited to get caught up with all her old teachers. It was an awkward kind of day, trying to find places in school we could hang out, her talking to teachers while I just sort of stood there. Rachel puts on this whole other persona sometimes around people, especially people she likes whom she hasn't seen for a while. It's kind of like the point-smile-"How'ya doin'???" persona. I feel so weird being around her when she's like that. It's hard to describe... overly friendly, I guess. She's never reacted like that when seeing me, thank God. I think it may even be some kind of defense mechanism for her, for people she's almost but not quite comfortable around.
Anyway, I didn't get to see her today because of the freezing rain, and she was feeling a little sick to begin with. It was disappointing because I had the entire evening free (except that we'd have to have dinner at my house, it being my brother's birthday and all). Really, I'm just very relieved to have her here, and not at college. I'm a very jealous boyfriend, it's true. I get a little worked up at the thought of her being in that dorm... in such close quarters... around all those guys... I mean, duh her roommate's a girl, but they could at least have separated the floor into two sections by gender, not be totally random about it.
I'm sorry, I'm officially in rant-mode, you may want to skip this next paragraph.
I know in college kids are supposed to be so "enlightened" and everything... leave their parents' ways behind, forge a path of their own. That's why college doesn't exactly breed conservatism. But still, even in the enlightened, liberalized world of college, how realistic is it to have dorms so co-ed? The bathroom situation, I mean specifically. In the adult world, women and men don't go parading down the same hallways in nothing but their bath towels, it just doesn't happen. Seems to me like it's completely stripping you of your privacy, and in fact very unnatural. If college is supposed to be preparing you for adulthood, why not give you a taste of what adulthood is really like? Let every room have its own bathroom, and if practicality won't allow for it, why not allow normal gender separations to take place, as mandated by the rest of society? Fortunately, UArts dorms are suite-style, with every suite having its own kitchen and bathroom, and none of the individual suites are co-ed, so hopefully I'll never find myself in this situation. Not that I couldn't handle it, or I'd be too shy, or whatever, it's just something I find very irresponsible and just plain weird, on the part of the college, and I wouldn't want to be subjected to it. I'm really thinking more for the girls' sake than the guys'... you know men.
Anyway, now that that's out of the way. As I was saying, I am a pretty jealous boyfriend. She talked about a guy who's kind of her friend there in Philly, whose a couple doors down from her, and I couldn't help feeling a little jealous. It's not as if I think she's going to leave me and run off with him, it's just that hey, I'm the one who loves her, why is he the one who gets to spend all his time with her? Not that she's really spending that much time with him... ah well, I never said my feelings were rational. This is one of the many things I don't particularly like about myself, but at least I know that after this year I'll probably get to spend all sorts of time with her, and the year after that I may even have the privilege of calling her my house-mate (apartment-mate, whatever (also probably one of about three or four apartment-mates)).
So, as per my original point, I'm glad she's home. I love her very much and hope I get to spend all day with her tomorrow.
-Dr. M
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