Today was a great day for me, honestly. And it's not even over yet, so it could get even better.
Yesterday I had the whole day to be productive and I wasn't. Today I had limited time and I was.
There's something about urgency that makes us act, even if the urgency isn't related to the action.
I think that's why advertising works so well. They convince us that something is a limited time offer or special and we desire it more. Not because it's all of a sudden more valuable, but because we desire things that are unique and special.
But that's not what I wanted to write about today. My topic is actually much more shallow!
I was listening to music today, and I realized that I hate bands. I think it's a stupid idea. Before you freak, hear me out.
I love music. If I thought I would be any good at it, I would major in music. But bands, like rock bands and praise and worship bands and rap groups, are ridiculous.
Not only does being in a band setting make the music lower in quality, typically, it makes it harder for musicians who aren't in a band to publish music.
Bands make music lower in quality for 2 reasons: leadership and record labels.
There is rarely, especially in rock, a person in a band who has any sort of professional music education. Maybe a guitar or voice teacher, but rarely formal. So, there is no one person who directs the overall flow of music. In an orchestra, or in the case of a soloist professional musician, there is one single person who has an image of the idea of the song, and individual musicians who work to help that image be completed; this is a much more efficient system.
Record labels make bands suck for 2 reasons as well. For one thing, they force bands to chug out albums with 10-12 songs every 2 years, whether or not anything quality is produced. I can't tell you how many times I've bought an album with 3 songs I liked and then 30 minutes of effervescent hardcore rock barf. Secondly, no band can ever write music that doesn't fit the "image" that the record labels and the public force it into. I get really sick of conformist/non-conformist arguments but, really, I've seen like 40 bands with the same haircuts. Plus, unless you're an independent band, you can barely even branch out from the mainstream rock sound without being "too weird."
Don't get me wrong, I don't really like independent music that much, either. They tend to try to be like the record label bands so they can become one, and if they don't, they don't get popular.
I realize that I don't really like bands as a whole, I like individual songs. It's hard for me to say "I like Relient K," I just like a lot of their songs. But, not all of them.
However, I can say that I like Handel (check the song stuck in my head), because I love the way he writes his music. He writes a song, using complicated theory, with up to 20 different parts on different instruments. Anyone can play his song, and it will sound similar, because it was so well written. No one will identify a cover of his music as the cover band's song, it will be Handel's, because everyone recognizes that it was his talent that made that music great, not the musician.
I can't say that about anyone today, because the musical process and the sacredness of having a unified, whole and complete song is completely gone. The music is meant to be more important than the musician, but now the emphasis is on the image and skill of the individual musician.
So, I blame the public, for our short attention spans and need for sound bytes with exciting, yet repetitive music. You drag down my musical experience.
So, I just write my own crap.
P.S. - Sorry if my blogs have been too long lately. I think big or I don't think at all. No in-between.
1.29.2009
1.28.2009
Frustration is my Name
You can always tell a good, strong-willed person because they do not get upset when they get reminded of their weaknesses.
I am not always one of those people.
There are some things that I get so competitive about, even though it really doesn't affect me whether I succeed or not.
And, while I'm really good at making sure I don't have an outburst about it, on the inside, I am irrevocably frustrated for hours.
It just goes to show you that humans have an incredibly pessimistic mind.
In psychology, we studied that, no matter how many times an event happens normally and positively, such as walking to work, if it goes wrong once and we step in mud or we get bumped into, the mind fixates on that one and tends to generalize it. When, in your frustration, you refer to it years later you might say, "I hated working there, I always stepped in mud walking to the office," even if it only happened once out of a thousand times.
In the same way, I can have a perfect day, with no school (which was pretty awesome, Wednesdays are my longest day, and there's no open dorm to fix any stress :-P) and fun weather, and time to rest and enjoy friends, and then one little event can ruin it. I no longer remember what I love.
Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't go berserk with anger over my day, I still think it was an awesome day. I just know that I won't remember it well.
My mind will forget the good.
The reason happiness is so hard to obtain is because it has to be a constant activity, whereas misery only needs to happen once.
A pleasant, peaceful life with your family is suddenly not happy if one of those family members dies. We forget the rest.
I'm not being depressing, I just think there's always room to fixate on the good and go against our natures.
I am not always one of those people.
There are some things that I get so competitive about, even though it really doesn't affect me whether I succeed or not.
And, while I'm really good at making sure I don't have an outburst about it, on the inside, I am irrevocably frustrated for hours.
It just goes to show you that humans have an incredibly pessimistic mind.
In psychology, we studied that, no matter how many times an event happens normally and positively, such as walking to work, if it goes wrong once and we step in mud or we get bumped into, the mind fixates on that one and tends to generalize it. When, in your frustration, you refer to it years later you might say, "I hated working there, I always stepped in mud walking to the office," even if it only happened once out of a thousand times.
In the same way, I can have a perfect day, with no school (which was pretty awesome, Wednesdays are my longest day, and there's no open dorm to fix any stress :-P) and fun weather, and time to rest and enjoy friends, and then one little event can ruin it. I no longer remember what I love.
Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't go berserk with anger over my day, I still think it was an awesome day. I just know that I won't remember it well.
My mind will forget the good.
The reason happiness is so hard to obtain is because it has to be a constant activity, whereas misery only needs to happen once.
A pleasant, peaceful life with your family is suddenly not happy if one of those family members dies. We forget the rest.
I'm not being depressing, I just think there's always room to fixate on the good and go against our natures.
1.27.2009
Konnichiwa, it's 3:06 A.M. in Japan.
So, yeah, I still want to write in this thing.
I decided that since today, all my classes had been cancelled due to ice, I had no excuse about not having enough time to blog.
That's usually what it is because it can take me up to an hour to write one of these things.
Unlike Kate who writes like a sentence.
I mean, uh... what a quality blog she has!
Haha, kidding, Kate.
I'm really fascinated by the concept of time today.
I have been in the past, but that was mostly when I took calculus and being fascinated by time was the cool smart kid thing to do. Now it's my own enterprise.
Wikipedia, my favorite dictionary, defines time like this:
"Time is a component of a measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify the motions of objects. Time has been a major subject of religion, philosophy, and science but defining time in a non-controversial manner applicable to all fields of study has consistently eluded the greatest scholars."
So time is actually something that cannot be defined unless you have a predisposition to what it already is.
I'm a see-arr-eich-eye-ess-tee-eye-A-enn, so I believe that time is a construct of God that allows us to live in a story that has a beginning, middle, and end, while he is a part of all of it, since he is not under time.
The generally held mathematical and philosophical view is my favorite, though.
So, we live in 3-D, right?
A single point is 1-dimensional, because it exists on one plane, the x axis. Oddly enough, a straight line is not 1-dimensional, it is 2-dimensional, because distance between 2 points in 2-dimensional.
So, straight lines and basic shapes are 2-dimensional. Anything flat, like squares, circles, art from old Mario video games, Tetris, things like that. They exist on the x and y planes.
3-dimensional objects include the z-axis, and require depth perception. A good exampe to help visualize 3-D is a rubix cube. If you can understand one of those things, you have great spatial perception.
Now, the first 3 dimensions are all that is included in the term "space."
Time, in this philosophical and mathematical view, is the 4th dimension. So, it's not like some Twilight Zone Dimension X kind of thing where you walk in the invisible door and you turn into a flamingo made of jello. Time is something you travel through, like the other 3 dimensions. It's a container.
Right now, I'm looking at my computer. In 10 minutes, it probably won't be sitting here.
So, if I came back and looked for my computer, it would not be here. Duh.
But, this is really interesting. In the other 3 dimensions, if something gets moved, you can just move it back. They only control location. However, in time, if something has moved forward, it is irreversible. Okay, that's as mathematical as I'll get.
Time is also the only one of the 4 dimensions that has a limit. Space is infinite.
One of the major problems, or so people think, is that they don't have enough time.
If time were unlimited, getting from point A to point B would not be an issue, because we woud just have to move far enough forward through time until we walked there. Then we could just come back through time until we got back, and yet it still would have happened. That's why God's existence is hard to make sense of, because he exists this way.
On a side note, I think that immortality for men on earth is useless. I mean, maybe humanity would be better off if Einstein had lived forever and invented something awesome, but on the whole it's a terrible idea as long as we have evil desires at all.
Example: If we as humans have trouble staying married our whole lives, as short as they are, how hard is it going to be if we live forever? IMPOSSIBLE!!! We also aren't going to reproduce as much because time isn't an issue, we can wait until the time is right. So, there would be like 40 people on the planet and they all hate each other because they were all married at one point. The End.
In summary, take some time today to think about whih you value more - the time you have left or your memories of the past. If you answered the time you have left, you haven't been living like you should.
I decided that since today, all my classes had been cancelled due to ice, I had no excuse about not having enough time to blog.
That's usually what it is because it can take me up to an hour to write one of these things.
Unlike Kate who writes like a sentence.
I mean, uh... what a quality blog she has!
Haha, kidding, Kate.
I'm really fascinated by the concept of time today.
I have been in the past, but that was mostly when I took calculus and being fascinated by time was the cool smart kid thing to do. Now it's my own enterprise.
Wikipedia, my favorite dictionary, defines time like this:
"Time is a component of a measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify the motions of objects. Time has been a major subject of religion, philosophy, and science but defining time in a non-controversial manner applicable to all fields of study has consistently eluded the greatest scholars."
So time is actually something that cannot be defined unless you have a predisposition to what it already is.
I'm a see-arr-eich-eye-ess-tee-eye-A-enn, so I believe that time is a construct of God that allows us to live in a story that has a beginning, middle, and end, while he is a part of all of it, since he is not under time.
The generally held mathematical and philosophical view is my favorite, though.
So, we live in 3-D, right?
A single point is 1-dimensional, because it exists on one plane, the x axis. Oddly enough, a straight line is not 1-dimensional, it is 2-dimensional, because distance between 2 points in 2-dimensional.
So, straight lines and basic shapes are 2-dimensional. Anything flat, like squares, circles, art from old Mario video games, Tetris, things like that. They exist on the x and y planes.
3-dimensional objects include the z-axis, and require depth perception. A good exampe to help visualize 3-D is a rubix cube. If you can understand one of those things, you have great spatial perception.
Now, the first 3 dimensions are all that is included in the term "space."
Time, in this philosophical and mathematical view, is the 4th dimension. So, it's not like some Twilight Zone Dimension X kind of thing where you walk in the invisible door and you turn into a flamingo made of jello. Time is something you travel through, like the other 3 dimensions. It's a container.
Right now, I'm looking at my computer. In 10 minutes, it probably won't be sitting here.
So, if I came back and looked for my computer, it would not be here. Duh.
But, this is really interesting. In the other 3 dimensions, if something gets moved, you can just move it back. They only control location. However, in time, if something has moved forward, it is irreversible. Okay, that's as mathematical as I'll get.
Time is also the only one of the 4 dimensions that has a limit. Space is infinite.
One of the major problems, or so people think, is that they don't have enough time.
If time were unlimited, getting from point A to point B would not be an issue, because we woud just have to move far enough forward through time until we walked there. Then we could just come back through time until we got back, and yet it still would have happened. That's why God's existence is hard to make sense of, because he exists this way.
On a side note, I think that immortality for men on earth is useless. I mean, maybe humanity would be better off if Einstein had lived forever and invented something awesome, but on the whole it's a terrible idea as long as we have evil desires at all.
Example: If we as humans have trouble staying married our whole lives, as short as they are, how hard is it going to be if we live forever? IMPOSSIBLE!!! We also aren't going to reproduce as much because time isn't an issue, we can wait until the time is right. So, there would be like 40 people on the planet and they all hate each other because they were all married at one point. The End.
In summary, take some time today to think about whih you value more - the time you have left or your memories of the past. If you answered the time you have left, you haven't been living like you should.
1.15.2009
Maybe a Christmas Post
Wo, I had so much to talk about over the vacation, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
It's not like this blog stresses me out or anything, I just feel like it's a place to let myself go, and I was already letting myself go so much by not accomplishing anything at all for a month that writing here would be a bit excessive.
That said the break was excellent.
But it was probably the most excellent when I got back to school and realized how much work awaits me here, as opposed to how calm it was back home.
*sigh* Now that that's gone, though, I have a few things to say.
I think I'm going to post on these in small little chunks.
A lot of it I have already talked to Kristen about, but I still want to write it out, just to chronicle that I thought it. I hate redundancy in myself.
Chunk A:
Do you think that clumsiness is a part of the Fall?
As in, do you think that clumsiness is the result of Adam's original sin?
I do.
People have died by accident, and caused pain by accident, and in a perfect world there is no pain, thus no clumsiness. Accidents, though not sinful, and from sin.
I wonder how many other things are like that?
Chunk B:
This sort of ties to Chunk A. Governments are only necessary because of the Fall.
Why is government legitimate?
The only reason we have government is because human society needs different personalities, leaders, helpers, providers, and so on, to function as a whole, and government, the leadership, is supposed to organize that.
Therefore governments are an organization of the people.
So why do we owe them allegiance?
Shouldn't we agree to follow their leadership? Of course.
Do they have power over us? Not really.
The only reason there are different governments is because leaders disagree, not because an entire population disagrees with another entire population.
Therefore, governments are not legitimate, since they don't properly lead the whole of mankind. We give them directive to organize us because man needs a leader and they claim to be the ones with those skills. However, once they obviously fail at this, we leave them in power.
I'm not promoting anarchy, just saying government is silly because it's composed of groups of people who drew lines around land and said they own it, rather than lead.
Chunk C:
All of my older friends in Dallas are having babies. This means I have almost no companionship my age there now.
Seriously, people, if you're my friend you won't ruin my life and have babies.
Just kidding.
I wish lots of joy on all of them. They're gonna be awesome mommies and daddies. Especially if their cat doesn't poop on their kid like it did on me.
That's all for now.
Enjoy your first week of classes.
Don't get too stressed out.
It's not like this blog stresses me out or anything, I just feel like it's a place to let myself go, and I was already letting myself go so much by not accomplishing anything at all for a month that writing here would be a bit excessive.
That said the break was excellent.
But it was probably the most excellent when I got back to school and realized how much work awaits me here, as opposed to how calm it was back home.
*sigh* Now that that's gone, though, I have a few things to say.
I think I'm going to post on these in small little chunks.
A lot of it I have already talked to Kristen about, but I still want to write it out, just to chronicle that I thought it. I hate redundancy in myself.
Chunk A:
Do you think that clumsiness is a part of the Fall?
As in, do you think that clumsiness is the result of Adam's original sin?
I do.
People have died by accident, and caused pain by accident, and in a perfect world there is no pain, thus no clumsiness. Accidents, though not sinful, and from sin.
I wonder how many other things are like that?
Chunk B:
This sort of ties to Chunk A. Governments are only necessary because of the Fall.
Why is government legitimate?
The only reason we have government is because human society needs different personalities, leaders, helpers, providers, and so on, to function as a whole, and government, the leadership, is supposed to organize that.
Therefore governments are an organization of the people.
So why do we owe them allegiance?
Shouldn't we agree to follow their leadership? Of course.
Do they have power over us? Not really.
The only reason there are different governments is because leaders disagree, not because an entire population disagrees with another entire population.
Therefore, governments are not legitimate, since they don't properly lead the whole of mankind. We give them directive to organize us because man needs a leader and they claim to be the ones with those skills. However, once they obviously fail at this, we leave them in power.
I'm not promoting anarchy, just saying government is silly because it's composed of groups of people who drew lines around land and said they own it, rather than lead.
Chunk C:
All of my older friends in Dallas are having babies. This means I have almost no companionship my age there now.
Seriously, people, if you're my friend you won't ruin my life and have babies.
Just kidding.
I wish lots of joy on all of them. They're gonna be awesome mommies and daddies. Especially if their cat doesn't poop on their kid like it did on me.
That's all for now.
Enjoy your first week of classes.
Don't get too stressed out.
1.13.2009
1.03.2009
They're... They're Alive!
So Happy New Year, everyone.
This one will be nice and short sa something odd is happening in the place of my residence.
Kate is here.
Not that this is bad, it's just interesting.
It was great seeing everyone at the New Year's party. It was also kind of important because it was the first time I had seen most of them outside of school.
It's a special kind of leap to move from a school-only relationship to something more. It was like that in high school and it's like that now.
I hadn't fully realized that all of you even exist outside of school until Kate and Lauren sat by my bed and read bridal magazines to me all morning.
It's nice to have new friends that I actually want to be with year round.
This one will be nice and short sa something odd is happening in the place of my residence.
Kate is here.
Not that this is bad, it's just interesting.
It was great seeing everyone at the New Year's party. It was also kind of important because it was the first time I had seen most of them outside of school.
It's a special kind of leap to move from a school-only relationship to something more. It was like that in high school and it's like that now.
I hadn't fully realized that all of you even exist outside of school until Kate and Lauren sat by my bed and read bridal magazines to me all morning.
It's nice to have new friends that I actually want to be with year round.
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