Bass

I've always loved music, ever since my dad would play me the beatles and green day and other phenomenal bands when I was a kid. Around fifth grade I attempted to get on the pop music bandwagon, and I almost succeeded, but as it turns out, most of today's pop music sucks. So I find more comfort in grunge, rock, metal, and alternative music.

Most recently I've been very much into the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Cage The Elephant to name two, but focusing more on the Chili Peppers, and in Flea, the bassist, in particular. Over the summer one of the junior counselors had an acoustic bass guitar, and I haven't really shown that much interest in guitars, but it was then I realized that bass is a super cool instrument! My reasoning was this: one, it'll be fun to learn and play, and two, chicks dig guys with guitars, or so I'm told. So when I got home from camp that summer, my dad found me a used acb (acoustic bass guitar) that I could borrow, and I've been learning ever since, mostly learning bass tabs from the Chili Peppers but otherwise slowly teaching myself, familiarizing myself with the bass and having way too much fun. My advice, if you have way to much time on your hands, then pick up an instrument and mess around. Even if you have no intention of learning it, it's still a ton of fun.

Such Great Hights

I am thinking it's a sign
That the freckles in our eyes
Are mirror images
And when we kiss they're perfectly aligned

And I have to speculate
That God Himself did make
Us into corresponding shapes
Like puzzle pieces from the clay

And true it may seem like a stretch
But it's thoughts like this that catch
My troubled head when you're away
And when I am missing you to death

And when you are out there on the road
For several weeks of shows
And when you scan the radio
I hope this song will guide you home

They will see us waving from such great heights
Come down now, they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
Come down now but we'll stay

I tried my best to leave
This all on your machine
But the persistent beat
It sounded thin upon the sending

And that frankly will not fly
You'll hear the shrillest highs
And lowest lows with the windows down
And this is guiding you home

They will see us waving from such great heights
Come down now they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
Come down now but we'll stay

They will see us waving from such great heights
Come down now they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
Come down now but we'll stay

(They will see us waving from such great heights)
(Come down now)
They will see us waving from such great heights
(Come down now)

DO NOT READ THIS POST! PLEASE, WHATEVER YOU DO, JUST DON'T READ IT!

Ok, since you've obviously disobeyed my above request you may as well read this post, because by now you're already almost all the way to the end of the second line. The real title of this post should have been reverse psychology, but I thought this might be a little more intriguing.

Most people have, at one point in their life, used reverse psychology on someone. That someone was probably younger than you, and you wanted them to do something for you or stop doing something. This tactic doesn't normally work on older people, who are more experienced in the use of reverse psychology, and know when to just not listen. Then of course there are the people who say, "listen to me, and the subject of this command must choose whether to ignore them, and therefore listen to reverse psychology, or obey the command. What should you do when caught in this situation? Well listen to me of course, and jump up and down on the spot until you fall asleep from exhaustion.

xkcd

A few years back, I was given a copy of Randall Munroe's, "What If?" I began to leaf through it and found increasingly ludicrous, and, might I add, interesting and thought provoking. From just the cover you can see that it really is ridiculous. It shows a dinosaur dangling over the sarlacc from star wars. After reading through the absurd answers to questions such as, "Is it safe to swim in a spent nuclear fuel pool?" and, "What if we put a portal that is one meter in diameter at the bottom of the mariana trench to drain the oceans?" and many more.

After finishing the book, I wanted more, because there just wasn't enough destruction for me in that one book. To solve this, I turned to the internet, and more specifically, xkcd, which is Randall Munroe's online web comic. xkcd doesn't actually stand for anything or mean something, but the actual comics are amazing. here are a few of my favorite ones. Hope you laugh a little and if you want more, just search for xkcd.com!

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

OCD. We've all heard someone blame one of their abnormalities on this extreme medical condition. Most of the times when someone says this they don't have OCD, maybe a mild form of it, but OCD can be extremely dangerous. Some types of OCD can cause strong impulses or thoughts that the person in question feels obligated to act on. These impulses are usually of a religious, sexual, or violent nature, and the person is unable to resist, possibly hurting themselves or others in the process. They are often confused, and don't really realize why they are doing what they're doing. Thankfully, this kind of OCD is very rare.

On another, lighter note, here's a music video by Rhett & Link, a pair of middle aged youtubers who are actually quite funny. It's about OCD, but not the super bad kind. Even though the video is extremely funny, and the song is really catchy, remember that this is actually real, and it affects people's lives in a very real way. One of the guys' wives  has actually been diagnosed with OCD, again, not the really bad kind, but it just goes to show that they're not making fun of OCD, or the people who have it. They're just writing a funny song and making a funny video about it. So please, if you can, laugh with them, not at them. But please do laugh. :D

All Apologies

I wanted to apologize for not posting anything lately. I have been living through many different extremes lately. By that I mean that some parts of my life are phenomenal, and some parts are pretty dismal. Not to long ago I was doing almost a post a day, and I realize that I've slowed down a lot. From now on I will try to post at least once a week, and probably more if I have the time and motivation.

Anyway, I've had this song stuck in my head for a while now, and yes, it is called All Apologies.

Lyrics
What else should I be
All apologies
What else could I say
Everyone is gay
What else could I write
I don't have the right
What else should I be
All apologies

In the sun
In the sun I feel as one
In the sun
In the sun
I'm married
Buried

I wish I was like you
Easily amused
Find my nest of salt
Everything is my fault
I'll take all the blame
Aqua sea foam shame
Sunburn with freeze burn
Choking on the ashes of her enemy

In the sun
In the sun I feel as one
In the sun
In the sun
Married, maried, maried!
Buried!
Yeah yeah yeah yeah

All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are

All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are

All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are

All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are
All in all is all we are

Stories Are The Only Thing Worth Dying for

The Unwritten is an eleven book graphic chronicle or the life of Tom Taylor, The son of a famous writer. In fact, the reason that Wilson Taylor is famous is his son. Wilson Taylor wrote a series of books about Tommy Taylor, a fictional boy based on his son, and there was the real pull for readers. A fictional boy and a real boy growing up at the same time, with virtually the same name. In the few excerpts you see of Wilson Taylor’s books you see that there are many parallels to other famous works, such as The Lord Of The Rings, Winnie The Pooh The Hobbit, The Chronicles Of Narnia, and most predominantly, Harry Potter.

Tom Taylor struggles with his life as other people begin to proclaim that he is Tommy Taylor, and that he is the second coming of christ. Tom Taylor’s life becomes more and more difficult as his life begins to mingle with Tommy’s and danger starts materializing at every twist in the path.

At first Tom Taylor only notices the discrepancies along the transition from reality to story. As those lines blur, and Tom Taylor starts to become one with Tommy Taylor, he begins to see which way the current is really pulling. He realizes that It was reality that was different from the stories, and that reality itself could be changed by belief from the masses. Tom Embraces his life as one of the few who have been given special abilities by Leviathan, the giant whale that feeds off stories.
I recommend this series for anyone who has the time to read them, and anyone who doesn't. It is a great story, even if it has some violence and explicit images. Definitely worth your time.

New Years Resolutions

I have never done one of these before. It seemed like a promise to myself that I would keep for a few weeks and then feel bad about breaking. But this year I have decided to try one out. But I promised myself that I would not make one that was impossible to complete, like those people in facebook who say that they are not going on facebook for a whole year. Which is ridiculous of course because nobody who is addicted to facebook is going to give it up for an entire year. Their resolve will crumble after maybe a week. So I decided to make an easy one. I decided that I wanted to be more cheerful. I realized that even though there are a lot of things in my life that aren't going the way that I planned, I need to be thankful for the things that are going well. So for the next three hundred and sixty-five days I will try my best to be more happy, and also a nicer person in general.

Music Is The Best Drug

Ok, hear me out here. I'm not saying that music is actually a drug, just that it has some qualities similar to drugs. For instance, music can get you into a mood, all kinds both positive and negative. I clearly remember playing dodgeball every day as a kid, at the old Williamstown Youth Center, where I used to go every day after school. One day some kid brought a CD player and played some pop music while we played dodgeball. I didn't even like the song! But I still found myself sort of bouncing to the beat, and once I realized it, I stopped, and then promptly started again once I realized that: one, it helped with the game, and two, everyone else was doing the exact same thing. Except for those sorry souls who had gotten out earlier in the game. These were sulking in a corner, feeling sorry for themselves. The point of this little anecdote is to show that music can affect your behavior, and make you act unlike your normal self. In a lot of drugs this is a bad thing, but not always. I have mild ADHD, which doesn't affect me all that much, but makes it really hard for me to sit still and focus, and make the right decisions. I take a medicine that doesn't make me calm, it allows me more time to think about things, almost in slow motion. This doesn't stop me from making poor choices, but it does allow me to choose instead of rushing to unpleasant conclusions that can lead to unwelcome circumstances.

Music can also be a tool, it can help you keep pace when running, or it can help you tune someone out really easily. But it can also be very inspirational, comicaly so. This leads us to our next anecdote. This actually happened very recently. My cousin and I decided to go outside and walk around in the woods next to my house. I had gotten a portable speaker for christmas and I brought it outside and started playing Two Steps From Hell music as a joke, saying that in order to climb the ridge, which was slick with snow, we would need some inspirational epic music. I have done a bit about Two Steps From Hell in this blog, but heres a few things you may or may not know about them. They write trailer music, so movies and video games mostly. But their songs are pretty well known, but they aren't. But anyway me and my cousin started dancing and generally making fools of ourselves and it was glorious, although i'm really glad that no one else was there to see or it would have been extremely embarrassing.

All I'm really saying in this post is that music is good for you, any side effects are most likely not a problem. Keep the volume down though, I'm not counting hearing loss as a side effect in this context. Listening to music should be natural, if you feel like singing along in a terrible, off key voice, please do so. If you want to dance, pretend nobody's watching, but even so, in a crowded lace neither of these are very good ideas, as the people around you might complain. Don't force your music on anybody, but enjoy it all the same. Happy 2016 everybody!