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Butterflies and Hurricanes
Papyrus Readers - I am an idiot.
Papyrus - Google is Cool.
Dilbert is Cool
The Distance We Keep
Transcendence.
HHAAAWRIGHT!!!
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February 27, 2005

Butterflies and Hurricanes

"She bit her lip."

That's what set it off for me. I realized I was at that very moment also biting mine and stopped.

What's my problem? I'm tense all the time. I'm high-strung. I'm type-A and I had some coffee a few hours ago but I got a guy feeling that isn't what this is about. Its about the conflict between contentedness and excellence.

To be content is to happy where you are. To be excellent is to be virtuosic at some aspect of life. Most people are content, some unhappy, and a handful are excellent. I know which one I am.

Charlie Peacock visited our school the other day and commented that our society doesn't value virtuosity, which is entirely true. Except that I do. I value it enough to stress out about it, but not enough to acheive it. I am lukewarm spittle.

I am bouncing around the issue again, being needlessly abstract. I hate people who do that. This is a blog, for crying out loud, not a poetry anthology. Alright the point is I want to be excellent. I am desparately driven to be the best. Right now I think that means being the best record producer I can be, perhaps better than I can be. There is entirely too little QUALITY in the world, I want to do something that is almost unarguably GOOD. I want to be a virtuoso, hence my discontent.

Life is full of wasted moments. Bite your lip. Life is lacking pure goodness. Bite your lip. Mediocrity is a grey noise in the universe, crowding out what is purely good and even purely bad. Bite your lip. You will be forgotten, BITE YOUR LIP. Your existence is white noise, BLEED YOUR LIP. You have not and will not change the course of the world. BLEED YOUR LIP. Cog in a gear in a waterwheel. Bite your lip. Insignificant. Bite your lip.

Whether or not any of that is true, i can never be content. I can't be satisfied. Of course the irony of this is that living in fear of life like I do may end it sooner - lets just say they don't call it "hypertension" for nothing. Life is short, you might as well try to be good.

----------

This blog entry sucks. I didn't say what I mean, or I didn't say it like I feel it, that's for sure. ::sigh:: maybe I'll revise it later.

Posted by pedalboy at 3:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 26, 2005

Papyrus Readers - I am an idiot.

Gratuitous bump so as not to confuse the readers.

I accidentally forgot to give you all the full url to my blog and instead sent you to my blog host's directory page... the correct url is:

http://blog.kordix.com/pedalboy

It is my personal blog, so there's other tchotsch in there too that you prolly don't care about.

As penance, here is the original blog that I typed, so you don't have to click through to another page to read all the cool stuff.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear, oh dear Papyrus readers:

Here's some links to find out more about what Google can do for you. This is my personal blog, so never you mind the other stuff in here. I am not |337 enough to filter the papyrus content to a separate URL for you. Yet.


About Google - A good place to start learning about their powerful search features.

Google Labs - The homepage of all the experimental and Beta features Google is still working on. "Sets" is particularly fun. I don't really know how it works.

The Google Deskbar seems like a good idea. Its a little search box you can add to your start bar to do google searches without even opening up a browser window.

Google Search Help - Proud nerds, do not shut this page because it says "help." This page is where you can learn to really master the Google engine. You can search for files of a certain type, pages on a certain website, fine pages that have a certain string of text in their URL, get stock quotes, translate pages in foreing languages, find out travel conditions, and find out what pages link to yours, which is a useful tool for web developers.

That's about all I got for today. I will leave you with a quote from Google about their new Movies feature:

"Popcorn and a date to snuggle up with are up to you. For now."

Posted by pedalboy at 3:31 PM | TrackBack

February 23, 2005

Papyrus - Google is Cool.

Dear, oh dear Papyrus readers:

Here's some links to find out more about what Google can do for you. This is my personal blog, so never you mind the other stuff in here. I am not |337 enough to filter the papyrus content to a separate URL for you.


About Google - A good place to start learning about their powerful search features.

Google Labs - The homepage of all the experimental and Beta features Google is still working on. "Sets" is particularly fun. I don't really know how it works.

The Google Deskbar seems like a good idea. Its a little search box you can add to your start bar to do google searches without even opening up a browser window.

Google Search Help - Proud nerds, do not shut this page because it says "help." This page is where you can learn to really master the Google engine. You can search for files of a certain type, pages on a certain website, fine pages that have a certain string of text in their URL, get stock quotes, translate pages in foreing languages, find out travel conditions, and find out what pages link to yours, which is a useful tool for web developers.

That's about all I got for today. I will leave you with a quote from Google about their new Movies feature:

"Popcorn and a date to snuggle up with are up to you. For now."

Posted by pedalboy at 9:13 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 22, 2005

Dilbert is Cool

dilbert23661820050221.gif

That one just made me laugh.

United Media Syndicate don't sue me. I'm just sharing some love... You email these out for free anyway... and you made it hard to link to your site. Don't sue, don't SUE!!!!

Posted by pedalboy at 11:57 PM | TrackBack

The Distance We Keep

So...

Shoot I always start these things with "so." Scratch that. Let's start again.

Why do we stay so far away from people?

Ahh... much better. Open, honest, maybe a little whiny, but hey, I'm not Bono here, cut me some slack.

Why do we stay so far away from people? The last few days (which really means a month or two), I have been trying to keep count of how many times i come into actual physical contact with someone else. Its just funny (read: sad) to think how loving and hateful each person you see in a day has the capability to be, and then to note how indifferent they are most of the time. I think it was kierkegaard who said that love and hate were not opposites - they are very close together at the top of a circle, with indifference being at the exact bottom. I've had days where I'd rather be punched than ignored. One more tally on my list for that day.

I've got friends that I'm better friends with on the internet than in real life. We keep it that way because we can be more open that way, and that gives us a good relationship in some respects. But we keep that distance because we're probably afraid to be friends on a more substantial level.

That's not really doing it for me. Hrm I had better expound on that for a little while longer.

We're good friends. If we weren't, we wouldn't talk about the things that we talk about. And we like each other. We come into contact occasionally in real life. But we didn't hang out when we had the chance. We don't hang out currently. We enjoy our separation. We find it to be useful, knowing we can't hurt each other badly, and not being able to love much either is a small price to pay for that... So we it would seem.
Anyway, I'm pretty sensitive to this sort of thing right now. But nevertheless, i still think its sad that I haven't touched a single person's skin today.

Posted by pedalboy at 11:43 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 16, 2005

Transcendence.

I went to walmart tonight. I bought a rice steamer.

I left walmart and it was cold and windy. My trenchcoat has always given me a sense that I am somehow supernatural, but now I felt stoic too. As a cold burst of wind hit me, I decided not to close up my coat, but to embrace it. Darn it was cold but I breathed it in.
I looked to my left, across the parking lot towards a field over a fence where the wind seemed to be coming from, and suddenly, the world at that moment fell into place. The wind that blew across that field came down from the sky in a great tumuluous churning in the world that I was slowly transversing. I savored the feeling, breathing deeply.
Snot flew out my left nostril. I realized that this is the world that I am king of now, also the same world that will kill me at a point in time unforeseen.
But for a space of about 30 feet, betwen walmart and that nissan suv, I had become a superhero, impervious to any attack of the soul, completely transcendent.


And I got back to Kinney, ate a string cheese stick, typed some garbage into this impersonal machine, represented as magnetic fields in precise locations on a rotating disc in Houston, Texas, and went to bed. Transcendent or not, tomorrow morning at 7:30 is going to hurt.

Posted by pedalboy at 1:39 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 6, 2005

HHAAAWRIGHT!!!

Well I haven't blogged anything in a very long time, and since my 160 gig external hard drive is (hopefully) transforming itself from a really really fragged state to a not as fragged-up state, I figured I might as well do it right now.

Here's an update: Amnesty Letters played a battle of the bands at SIUE last night which was fun. The soundguy sucked terribly and the bands were WORSE, as a general rule. My friend Caleb Engstrom's band played and he is an amazing songwriter and all-around more-creative-than-I-am person. His band didn't have a drummer, BUT it had a tap-dancer. Yes you read that right. There was a girl keeping the beat with her feet in all sorts of sweet ways. She had only been rehearsing with the band for two days so I can't wait to see what sorts of awesomeness develops from this. He won first prize, and dang did he deserve it. I'm also pretty almost 100% sure i'm going to buy a lap steel slide guitar now. Oh man it does my soul good to hear really good songwriting these days, and lots of people doing a folk or folk-influenced sort of thing. It was a near spiritual experience to see him play last night. Awright moving on.... the 2nd place band i didn't see cuz i ducked out a bit for some steak and a shake, but the man in charge of the low end in AL said there were decent. Then the third place band is from Edwardsville, and went last, and were definitly not amazing, played TWO covers, that sort of thing, so we think that was a bit fixed. But only losers say that. But hey, we lost so I guess we can. Whatever.

Ok so i was not myself last night. I loved it. I hate being too much myself. Oh gosh life is so grey sometimes because nothing is hardly ever truly one thing. But comprimeses are boring. My life is a comprimise and it is restrained. It is a wonderful feeling to leave that personality that you usually wear in the closet for a night (or day or year) and be something else. It can't be disingenuous because you are what you are and you can't NOT be. When there is a conflict between an image of what I have been and what I currently am, the image must be changed. I must have been frustrated or something to feel the need to be crazaw. Awwright I think i've exhausted that topic. Somebody comment an AMEN on that or something.

Man my HD is only 3% defragged. Shoot dang i wanna go hang out at dubach. I don't think I have much more to say. Maybe i'll play some more Need for Speed Underground. I am SOO addicted.

OOOH I know what I can talk about. Two things.

First, I want things I don't need. This is a problem. I want. I mean, everybody wants stuff but i feel this sort of thing consuming me. I cannot concentrate on others when I want so badly for myself. I became aware of the severity of the problem this summer and decided not to buy anything big (and as a corallary not to desire anything big) for an undetermined amount of time. Up until recently I was doing pretty good. Maybe that's why I was feeling pretty good about life and that sort of thing. But anyway, my little tech21 amp is meeting its end, I think. I'm outgrowing it, its too quiet, soundguys laugh at it when they see it (no joke), the reverb knob isn't working anymore (which has half of what made that amp great), its not very expressive, and its not very expressive. And it doesn't sound all that great for me anymore. In short, my ears have moved on to bigger and better things. So I began to look at replacement amps. Because I want
I am broke. I am always broke. Correction, I am always in debt. There are things I need to be saving up for. Big things. Expensive things. Things I need soonish that are NOT guitar amps. Things that will probably involve selling a bunch of other gear to afford anyway... I'm not in a position to want things. In short, I want a Fender Prosonic 2x10 combo, which will run anywhere from $500 to $1000. The prices fluctuate wildly. That's not the point. The point is I am again going to spend money (when I can find on of these that isn't listing for $995) that I don't have. Here are some of the lyrics to a song that has stuck with me for a long while now, Derek Webb's "Beloved."

"Beloved these are dangerous times
Because you are weightless like a leaf from the vine
and the wind has blown you all over town
Because there is nothing holding you to the ground

So now you would rather be
A slave again than free from the law

Beloved listen to me
Don't believe all that you see
and don't you ever let anyone tell you
That there's anything that you need
But me

Beloved these are perilous days
When your culture is so set in it's ways
That you will listen to salesmen and thieves
Preaching other than the truth you've received."

Don't you ever let anyone tell you that there's anything that you need, but me. That one statement is probably the most poignant thing I have ever heard. Poignant because it cuts me to my marrow to hear it and know how true it is. Around the time I was listening to that cd a lot, I was working for Vector Marketing, selling people really sharp knives.

Allow me to indulge my guitly conscious and make a statement that maybe will help people out a bit:

SHARP KNIVES WILL NOT SAVE YOUR SOUL. SHARP KNIVES WILL NOT MAKE YOU HAPPY. SHARP KNIVES, CHIC CIGARATTES, IMPORTED BEER WILL NOT BRING YOU A WOMAN WHO WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE COMPLETE OR BE WHAT YOU THINK YOU'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR. SHARP KNIVES MAY SAVE YOU A SMALL AMOUNT OF FRUSTRATION AS YOU CUT MEAT. LUSTING AFTER MATERIAL OBJECTS MAY MAKE YOU COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY MISERABLE.

I'm speaking from experience. Sorry if you didn't need to hear that, I'm saying it mostly to myself. I quit vector marketing after two days and no rest.

Second, (fulfilling the pop philosophy requirement of this blog) quantum mechanics makes free will possible. Kant was wrong about the division between science and religion, mostly because he didn't know anything about quantum mechanics. Ok allow me to summarize the problem here that led him to separate the worlds of science and religion. Science is based on determinism: i.e. one thing happens because another thing happens - causality. Your arm moves because there is a chemical/electrical impulse in your muscles that causes them to contract. That chemical/electrical impulse is there because it followed a trial of nerves from your brain. Your brain is a lot more complex and its hard to see what is causing what, precisely, but it appears to be quite safe to say that everything that happens was caused by something. These chemical reactions follow rather strict rules and are predictable. Thus you have no free will, even though you think you do, because your decision-making organ is subject to determinancy. Well that blows, huh? So Kant separated relition and science, because of the whole free-will thing... I think.
But here's where he fouled up, IMHO. He didn't know about things on the quantum level. Things are FREAKY on the quantum level. There is indeterminancy and true randomness existing all over the place!! You can't predict where an electron is around the nucleus of an atom. You can only predict the probability of where it is. in fact, in may not be in any one particular place at all! It may exist 75% here and 25% there, or in both places at once. Things get WIERD on a quantum level. This sort of randomness introduces the chaos into the system that will make it possible for small variations in the outcome of events up the chain. And consciousness comes from many many small parts becoming a whole (maybe i worded that badly and maybe that's just plain wrong) so your consciousness is then allowed some freedom because of the randomness in the unverse that it is both experiencing AND responding to.

HAAAWRIGHT that's all i got. Somebody PLEASE comment like your life depends on it. There's a lot of room for contention in there. Man my hard drive is only 18% defragged... It looks a little better already though... Leave comments, send me an email, post an etire reply blog using the anonymous login, do something. I'd like to talk about some of this some more. Thanks for reading.

-matt.

Posted by pedalboy at 2:28 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack