Adrift

Fusion of Past and Future

April 4th, 2009

There is so much about this that is beautiful, I cannot adequately express. I only wish I knew how to get to there from where I am.

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For All You Crafty Types

March 26th, 2009

Here is a YouTube video that you may find of interest. On a related note, this is an excellent webcomic.

That’s all for now.

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So, as some of you may know, I was working at Circuit City. They’ve since gone out of business and been liquidated — Sunday was my last day of employment there. So once again, I have joined the ranks of the unemployed. On the one hand, I am without a regular income. On the other, I have plenty of time to listen to all the new music I bought.

Well, I mean, in addition to looking for a new job, of course. Seriously though, in the past two days alone, I snagged nine CD’s for about twelve dollars. A good number were forays into uncharted territory, and not all of them worked out, but that’s still a lot of audio to digest.

Here’s a quick list of what I’ve acquired in the span of the fall of my employer, in approximate chronological order. Asterisks denote purchases somewhere not Circuit City:

Fight with Tools (Flobots) - Of note, this is my first CD with a parental advisory sticker on it. I was pleasantly surprised to find this does not detract from my enjoyment of the music.

Reanimation (Linkin Park) - A remix CD. The cover always intrigued me (Anime-style mecha music CD? Okay!), and there’s a few good tracks. There’s some not-so-good ones though, so eh.

Minutes to Midnight (Linkin Park) - The special edition revised version — all the yummy songs, none of the profanity! Well, you can still definitely tell what they were saying, but it takes the edge off some. And really, it only applies to, like, two songs. A lucky find.

*III (Yoshida Brothers) - Yay, my Ayyam-I-Ha present! A mix of traditional Japanese sound with electronic/rock. A bit of trivia: I’m pretty sure they did the music for the first wave of Wii commercials. Fun stuff~

The Else (They Might Be Giants) - More wonderful, weird They Might Be Giants. It actually came with a second CD called “Cast Your Pod to the Wind”, so double the awesometacity.

Music from the Motion Picture Stranger Than Fiction (Various) - I love this movie! The music is wonderful too! Although, some of the songs actually have lyrics. Very…interesting lyrics.

Survive Kaleidoscope (Underoath) - Such interesting song titles, but…screamo. I prefer hearing people sing, myself. One of the less successful experimental purchases.

*Fear of a Blank Planet (Porcupine Tree) - Ace kept telling me to get a CD of this band because I’d love them. So now I have. And I do. Yay other Ayyam-I-Ha present~

Dig Out Your Soul (Oasis) - One of two CD’s I remember listening to on a few trips to drum lessons and the bank a month ago. Good stuff; especially enjoy the first and last tracks.

Comalies (Lacuna Coil) - Sam introduced me to this band, and I enjoyed them, thus this purchase. Besides, they have such a cool band name. Lacuna Coil.

*Black Holes and Revelations (Muse) - This band came highly recommended by an IRC acquaintance, and I’d heard Knights of Cydonia on Guitar Hero. A wonderful album.

*Toxicity (System of a Down) - Buying this was a conflicted decision for me. On the one hand, I absolutely love Chop Suey!, Toxicity, and Aerials. But then there’s songs like Bounce…and Needles…In the end, the good was too good to continue to deny myself.

The Well (Waking Ashland) - iTunes categorizes this album under “Gospel & Religious”. I haven’t gotten to listen to it quite thoroughly yet, but I think I like it.

With Arrows, With Poise (The Myriad) - Another album I’ve only listened through once. When I did, I at first thought I was hearing Muse. Which to me is a good thing. So, yeah.

The Mix-Up (Beastie Boys) - An instrumental album! And it’s yummy.

Cover Your Eyes (Sullivan) - Again, don’t quite remember this one’s sound. But I remember liking it, so that’s what counts. It’s got some interesting art/design too, although getting the safety sticker thing off was a pain because of it.

Dumb Luck (Dntel) - Not so sure I dig this one. Kinda surprising, seeing as it’s Electronica/Dance. I’ll have to give it another listen before I make a final call.

And You Were A Crow (THE PARLOR MOB) - Some good ol’ Rock and Roll. Ah kin dig it.

Hand Built by Robots (Newton Faulkner) - For some reason, my brain wants to call him William Faulkner. Which is kinda weird. Anyway, love this one.

Trav’lin’ Light (Queen Latifah) - So you remember how I like Stranger Than Fiction? Well, I like it enough to give an actress in it a listen. I’m ah…not so sure I groove with the Queen though. Most exemplified by the song “How Long (Betcha’ Got A Chick On The Side)”.

This is Not the World (The Futureheads) - The lead singer’s got a quirky voice, but I think it fits with their music. I likes it~

Bringing Back the Funk (Brian Cumbertson) - Eh, I dunno. I can dig the instrumental tracks, but when there’s lyrics it’s fifty-fifty. Ah well.

Neptune City (Nicole Atkins) - Not necessarily the usual vein or style of rock I go for, but I really like this album. A risk I’m most glad I took. And really, at the 90%-off point how couldn’t I?

So! Yes. Lots of music to savor. Not to mention I also got my hands on a few DVD’s, namely Good Burger, Stranger Than Fiction, The Simpsons Movie, and the Noein box set. It’s too bad I let the Memento and Iron Man special edition DVD’s and the “savage edition” of Born Into This escape me…but really, I should be thankful for all that I have right now. Which I am — it’s great to have fresh tunes in my library.

Next time, Memento! Next tiiiiime! *shakes fist*

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Phase One Initiated

September 29th, 2008

So here I am in McHenry. The original plan was to chill at Ace’s Parents’ place, but after some discussion, it was decided that camping out at Ace and Allison’s house was a more prudent idea. Since I’d be trying to find a job in McHenry and all, as opposed to Woodstock.

Groceries have been purchased, and applications submitted. Well, okay, only one application so far. But that’s better than none, right? Right…?

That’s all from me for now~

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Turning of Days

September 8th, 2008

So I’ve decided to move! This is somewhat old news to a number of you, I imagine, but I thought I should…I dunno, make it official? So, yes. Reports of my change in residence are, in fact, not greatly exaggerated.

This decision was a result of me visiting my good friend Ace Waters at the end of August. We made some movies, played some games, and talked about a lot of things. In other words, we hung out. And I realized that I really missed being able to do that with my friends.

And thus, the moving. Here’s hoping I get some forward momentum from shaking things up.

As a side note, I wonder if my lappy has a virus! Seems like I only get about 10-15 minutes of internet browsing tops before it decides to start running at a speed approaching zero. Good ol’ AdAware assures me that there are only ever negligible threats or level 3 TAC…things present. I’m beginning to question just who the program is working for.

…Of course, it’s working just fine right now, after a force-restart. Which was intended as a force-shut down, but somehow resulted in immediately turning it back on…

Regardless! Whadda youse guys think?

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Sequitur, or Non?

August 2nd, 2008

So the other day, the guy who owns Courier Cafe was in when I got to work, as he sometimes is. Traditional morning greetings ensue, him being one of the (many) people with much better name recollection ability than myself. I’m fine, he’s great, end of contact.

But after a couple steps he stops, turns around, and says (to the best of my recollection), “In fact, the only way I could be better was if I cloned myself!”

…Uh, what…?

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Two Simple Words

July 1st, 2008

DO. WANT.

Edit: So there actually was something else I wanted to comment on this, and I only just remembered! Well, that and I wanted to see the effect of the post as it was.

But yeah, I’m really, really hoping that the transition from “Mega Man” to “Mega Man X” series is explained in this game. The numbering system is too perfect for them not to capitalize on it, barring some new line of games starring Sigma as the protagonist. Which would be odd, to say the least…but also intriguing. I mean, they already did that with Tron Bonne, so who knows?

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Ho-hum

June 7th, 2008

Oh dear it’s the 7th.

Ummm…still cruisin’ along. Still salad bar-ing. Oh! That’s right. I’m the most senior salad bar person there now, according to the new manager — and I haven’t even been there for a full year. Almost, but not quite. Sca-ree. I don’t want to be the 35-year-old guy who’s been setting up the salak bar since forever because he couldn’t figure out what to do…

Also, closing the salad bar, despite what the person who trained me said, is not easy. Seriously. Salad bar closes at 9 PM on weekdays. First night on my own, I closed everything down by myself…and finished at midnight. Second night on my own, I got out at something like 10:05 PM, but only because the manager for the night did about 75% of the work for me. So yeah. I’ll stick with getting up early and opening, thank you very much.

…Please let me not have to close ever again…

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More Matter Musings

May 3rd, 2008

So my room feels kinda warm right now. This is due to the confluence of two factors: 1. the coming of spring, and thus the overall rising temperature, and 2. my main lamp being on. This is a floor lamp I’m talking about — tall, pretty good at the making with the light. Thing is, light tends to be pretty warm…well, outside of poetry anyhow. Y’know, like, “the cold light of morning,” or something like that. Anyhow, that got me thinking.

Light is heat. Even when the thing that is generating said heat isn’t generating light we can see – say a person’s body – it can still be detected as light, right? Warmer points show as red, colder blue…thermal imaging, I believe it’s called. So provided that makes sense…

Heat is motion. Water starts as a liquid, but turns into a gas when heated past a certain point. The atoms are moving so fast that they can’t hold together anymore, and break away from each other. Conversely, when chilled beyond another certain point, the molecules stop moving to such an extent that the water loses its fluidity, hardening into a solid state. This is true, yes? Thus, following the transitive property…

Light is motion. Of course, it has been established as a measurement of motion, in that nothing moves faster than light. But what if light is absolute motion, or rather, the physical embodiment thereof? What would that mean?

Well, first off, it would probably mean that light has no mass whatsoever. Which is why nothing can travel at the speed of light in the first place – people, planets, dust molecules: we all have mass. I’ve never heard of anyone attempting to measure the mass of light before, but I can’t really discount the possibility. Still, it seems rather unlikely to me. Light having mass would indicate that it was made of…well, something. Stuff. Particles. Matter can be converted into energy, which light also is, but it is then no longer matter, right? And if light had mass, wouldn’t that mean that electricity and heat — that all energy would have some amount of mass? I’m not so sure on this one…

Still, what if light doesn’t have mass? Well then, it means that light is motion, like I suggested before. Which might then mean that dark matter is unmotion. Absolute immobility. And also, therefore, matter — as its current name would suggest. But in what role does that leave dark matter? Since, in this hypothesis, dark matter is totally and completely immobile, might that not make it the structure of the universe? The stuff between which motion exists, between which light must travel. Though, if the universe is expanding, then how is more dark matter created? How could something come into existence without ever experiencing motion? And where does that leave nothingness, or the vacuum of space, if indeed that’s what the area between light and dark matter is…?

…But yeah, anyhow. Another glimpse into what I think about on occasion when I brush my teeth.

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Slippery Slope, For Five Hundred

April 8th, 2008

So I got a haircut about a week or so ago. Some may regard this as a most noteworthy incident in and of itself. However, my hair was getting into the “hang just far enough down to poke at the edges of my eyes and drive me insane” phase, so it was unavoidable.

I wasn’t exactly expecting to spend almost $500 dollars, though.

You see, there’s only one place I know for sure I can get a haircut in Champaign-Urbana — the mall. While they are rather close to my previous employer (The Store That Shall Not Be Named), they do a good job and I’d probably spend the same amount of time searching for another place as I do taking the Gold West bus line to the Red North. My tipping habits did make the haircut itself more expensive than it would be for most other people, but altogether that’s only thirty, thirty-five dollars. Spread over six months, I can handle it no problem.

It was after I’d arrived at the mall, but before getting the haircut, that I thought to myself that I’d just check in at GameStop and ask them if they had a Wii in stock. Well, truth be told…I’d thought that ever since it had become clear I needed to go to the mall, but! I thought it again at that point. Wii’s are still in high demand, and they’d been sold out at the GameStop on Green Street, Meijer’s, Wal-Mart…they’re just not found at retailers. So it was all in good fun — I’d ask, they’d say they were out, and I’d be on my merry way to cooler hair (as it applies to temperature, at any rate).

As it turned out, they had three of them. They’d had five ten minutes previously, but two had already sold by the time I’d asked. Faced with a retail price of $250 and the prospect of finally being able to play my copy of Super Smash Brothers Brawl, there was little deliberation in the matter. And of course, I’d need at least another controller, Brawl being multiplayer and all. And I’d need a change of pace from SSBB at some point, so as long as I was there, I might as well grab a couple other titles.

So there you have it, the $500 question. And if you ask me, it was worth every cent. Brawl is crazy awesome like a fox.

To the max.

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Adrift

Fusion of Past and Future

For All You Crafty Types

Making the Most of It

Phase One Initiated

Turning of Days

Sequitur, or Non?

Two Simple Words

Ho-hum

More Matter Musings

Slippery Slope, For Five Hundred

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