Haha, a little over a month ago I posted this:


"Major project, due yesterday: I have not started it.
Major group project due in a week and a half: For some fucking reason I was made producer for this thing. Haven't started it. Find myself not caring.
News story due tomorrow: haven't started it, have no ideas, neither does my reporter.
Major audio project due in a week and a half: This I might get done."

My GPA this year was 3.8. No I don't know how I pulled that off.

It was nice feeling good for a change.

Something went horribly wrong this semester. My enthusiasm for Media Production waned pretty fast after Christmas break, and I've managed to do this to myself:

Major project, due yesterday: I have not started it.
Major group project due in a week and a half: For some fucking reason I was made producer for this thing. Haven't started it. Find myself not caring.
News story due tomorrow: haven't started it, have no ideas, neither does my reporter.
Major audio project due in a week and a half: This I might get done.

And now I can't sleep so I'm just uselessly laying in bed ranting on the internet. yay.

Was going to do something productive today, read webcomics and went for a walk instead.

I'm conflicted about continuing with media production.

It's pretty late to be thinking about this. I've already invested a year in the program. It's very late to be applying to university or whatever.

The second year is reportedly a lot better than the first, and I won't have to do the stuff that I dislike the most.

(mostly reporting- I could be a good reporter I think, maybe an amazing one, but i hate setting up interviews and trying to get information from people. People are inefficient. Also, the kinds of things I'm interested in aren't the kinds of things that most reporters cover).

But I don't see myself being an editor, or an audio tech or anything like that. I don't think It's what I want to do with my life.

I'm almost certain that my parents will tell me to take the second year. I'll be able to get my certificate, for what it's worth. and I will have finished something. I have time in the future to try other things.

But if I already know this isn't what I want to do (is it too early to decide that?), why spend another year on it? Shouldn't I begin trying new things as soon as possible?

I've pretty much given up finding a workable system of "objective morality." I'm not convinced such a thing can even exist.

It seems to me that since morality describes some actions as "better" than others, it's inherently subjective, since you must ask "better for what?"

Since what is "better" for you depends on your values, and your values are subjective, it follows that morality is as well.

Sometimes I think I must be manic-depressive or something. Once or twice a week, the haze lifts and I feel like a god among men. I just want to grab the whole world, rub it all over my body and snort it through a bendy straw.

That sounds really fucking weird, but there it is.

I want to make it a priority to experience more. You can learn a lot through the internet and things like that, but one of the reasons I've been unsuccesful in the art sense is that I don't have anything to say- the things that I find important have been said already.

The only way to remedy this is to find things out first hand rather than through someone else. Sure, maybe what I find out won't be new, but it will be new to me, and I'll be able to say it my way, rather than regurgitating the thoughts of others (no matter how much sense they make).

I can already feel my enthusiasm fading but...

I want to write music that changes lives through pure emotion, with lyrics that reveal untold truths.

I want to create paintings that give you the feeling you get when you realize that you can now do what you couldn't before. (I don't even paint)

I want to make the world's most delicious sandwich and share it with a group of geniuses who go on to invent cold fusion, or FTL travel, or Foglets.

Oh, and I want to do everything else too.

Fuck insomnia.

I don't think I ever listened to The Bedlam In Goliath all the way through back when I first bought it, but luckily that mistake has been corrected. I threw it in my CD player on a whim and listened to it on the walk home from school.

I think it might be my favourite Mars Volta album, although maybe I'm just starting to get used to their sound. To be honest I don't listen to them very much, but the music is so interesting that I kept buying albums to see what they were up to.

One thing I like is that the album has very few fade out/fade in transitions. Everything sort of flows together without stopping. TMV don't really structure their songs in a traditional way, so it almost seems like one giant track with new ideas being continually added and removed.

I have a thing for concept albums I guess.

True to form, the lyrics in this album are totally indecipherable, but supposedly the story is about a Ouija Board called the Soothsayer that was owned by a member of the band (before he had it buried in an undisclosed locations). If you just imagine everything on this album being said by an evil Ouija board it works surprisingly well.

OTHER THINGS

Whenever I'm walking home from the college, I start thinking about all the projects I want to work on. I get really excited about them, but as soon as I get home, all my enthusiasm disappears and all I want to do is sleep or play something mindless on the computer.

I think I need to start exercising and getting a good amount of sleep again. I was a happier person (and at least somewhat more productive) back when I was in TaeKwon-Do. There's just the problem of what/where/when I can do it, since the house is pretty small and other people are always around.

I've realized a few reasons why my projects fail to get off the ground. One is that I really have nothing I want to say, in particular, that seems very important. I want to say SOMETHING, and I think I have the means/skill to say something well. I just don't know what it is.

Any revelations I have about life or what have you generally come after a long period of thinking and discussion and related beliefs and it just seems pointless to try to distill it all into a single message.

I also tend to aim way high. I always want my projects to be big and earth shattering and awesome, but I don't have the experience in any art form. They just collapse on themselves. I just don't seem to have any motivation to work on something that isn't epic in some way.

Eight hour band practice. Blisters now on three fingers.

So my band, now named "This Man Needs Hydration" played at SUDS last night. I think the performance went pretty well. I fucked up on our last song, but I don't think anyone noticed.

We're at least good enough that we aren't boring people, so that's a start. The band's pretty good at working together when it comes to writing music as well, which has been a big help.

Had some problems with the rehearsal though. I don't know if it's because we took a week off when our guitarist was away, or what, but I developed massive blisters on my fingertips. These things are the size of your head. I wore a glove for the whole practice, and I mostly played with one finger during the actual show (if you can call 3 songs a show). Luckily I managed to ignore the pain enough to play decently.

Also I decided to change the battery for my bass' active electronics and ended up pulling the wire off the battery connection bit. It was only a matter of time until that happened, because that part's always been finnicky, but it was particularily bad timing. We ended up going to Ryan's to pick up his bass, which was even harder on my fingers.

Oh well, it all turned out in the end.

We have our big gig at Lady of the Lake next Friday and need a lot more material, so there are more practices on the way. I'm looking forward to it though.

I also can't wait to get my hands on Steven Wilson's solo album. I missed out on the horrendously expensive collector's edition, but the normal release is coming out soon. I can't stop listening to this song, it keeps growing on me.



Sometimes I wish we were playing weird experimental stuff instead of jazz/funk, but it should just be more incentive to write my own music. Solo career in my future?

I like this.

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/reviews/sixword_reviews_of_763_sxsw_mp3s.php

A little while ago I was listening to music and a song from Persona 3 came on- I suddenly started to feel really sad. I think it's the first time I've ever missed a group of fictional characters, which just goes to show how well the game develops them.

I'm a little skeptical about being able to control your teammates in Persona 4. It might make them feel less like separate people. Luckily it gives you the option to have them be computer controlled as well. It will be interesting to see if I end up loving these characters as much as the last group.

One thing I thought Persona 3 could have done better was show you the impact of apathy syndrome. I mean, you see the victims out around the town, and you hear about it on the news, but no one you ever know gets it or is affected by it really. Persona 4's killer almost seems more dangerous, since he's grabbing your friends right from the start.

NERD END.

I went to shoot curling today and almost passed out at my camera. I was standing on the ice, and I think the temperature difference between my feet and the rest of my body caused some problems. I kept yawning, felt nauseous, and eventually started losing vision and had to sit down. I spent the rest of the mobile inside the truck doing graphics/audio, and I seem to be ok now. It was not a good feeling though.

I finally beat Persona 3 FES. Although the last month of game-time started to drag, the ending of the game really made all the themes hit home.

I don't know if this was intentional or not, but the day before the last battle, none of my social links were around, and the city seemed totally empty. Without the social links, there's nothing meaningful to do during the day.

I also really liked the Nyx-Avatar battle. Through its weaker forms, it seems to be agreeing with the characters, but as soon as it switches to the last arcana, you know exactly what you're fighting against (in a philosophical sense).

The ending made me wish I had maxed more links out. I had a few that were very close. I don't think it's worth going through the whole game again to find out what happens to them, but maybe if I ever do the new game+.

I haven't played through "The Answer" yet, but I really want to find out about that butterfly robot, and why Aigis is beating on Akihiko in the opening video...

Well today has been quite productive.

By my usual standards anyway.

There was no school today for a "professional building session" for the teachers, but I was hired by the school to film the guest speaker at it (by hired I mean an instructor asked who would do it and I raised my hand first). Turns out the speaker was really good, meaning the filming went by pretty fast, and that's 75 dollars in my pocket (once they actually give me the cheque).

Greg, one of our video instructors, also gave me the idea to do a news story on the presentation, since I've been unable to get interviews for my previous idea (and it's due tomorrow). So I got an excellent interview with the presenter and several teachers, and I just need to edit everything together tomorrow.

When I got home I fiddled around on bass for a while and managed to figure out a part for some lyrics I've had kicking around. I'll have to play with it for a bit longer to see if it will work or not, but it's a start.

As of now I have about 20 minutes of recorded material (material being half baked bass-line ideas), which is a lot more than I thought I did. Lots of it is repetition or variation of the same parts, but there could be as many as 10 potential songs in there.

One thing that is annoying is that I really have to boost the bass EQ to get a good sound with my USB converter thingy. Otherwise you can hear every tiny movement of my fingers, and it sounds really awful. I keep forgetting to do it though.

Finally, I also came up with a good name for one of the characters in my new OHR project (Oh god why did I start a new OHR project). I didn't work on it too much, but a few of the concepts I'll be using got fleshed out in my mind, so that's something.

It's a lot easier to plan this project since it takes place in a single, narrowly defined location as opposed to an entire, fleshed out country. It's still going to take a lot of work though.

Sadly, I didn't accomplish what I was supposed to this weekend, which was my radio contest project- I need to come up with something fast, but I'm still drawing a blank for most aspects of it.

Also, my family bought a new car today, so that's something as well.

Oh yeah, I'm also 20 as of Saturday.

Things to do in 2009

-write an album`s worth of music (seems like a good benchmark)
-Create that game concept that`s been floating around in my head
-make this game review show work (even though it`s Travis` idea)
-find out how to make my computer stop switching to the French keyboard layout
-fill a sketchbook with sketches
-write some short stories

All these are going to require some discipline, which is something I lack. Gotta do it though.

http://studioeres.com/immortal/

Get it.

I
Feel
Awesome

Hurray for sleep! Things to do today:

Wrap Christmas gifts
Unwrap Christmas gifts
Sketch!
Play bass for at least 45 minutes (why 45? I don't know)
Write? Work on roleplaying campaigns?
Possibly build a couple of M:TG decks (I have some ideas)

Inspired by Immortal Defense (go play that demo if you haven't), I've been thinking of starting a game project again. The thing that scares me is the time commitment- the games that inspire me have generally taken about 6 months to several years to make, and I'm not sure I want to spend that much time on something, especially since I'd have to learn how to code.

Maybe a comic then? Where Gods and Mortals Dance has been making me feel artistic... guess we'll see.

Grandpa and Nanna gave me a 50 dollar gift card for iTunes, so I've been downloading some stuff I've never seen in Brandon. So far:

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog
Mother Tongue- Follow the Trail
The Strand- Destroyers of that which is destroyed and rulers of that which is not destroyed.
Braintoy- Vehicles

Think I'll get some Modey Lemon next... I have about 15 bucks left.

I did a drawing just now that I was pretty happy with, and then I completely ruined it when I tried to ink it.

Oh well.

Man, going to a shopping mall during Christmas season really sucks.

I got a Bloc Party CD for Michael, and a bottle of Baileys and a tiny frying pan (It's what she wanted!) for Mom. I still don't know what to get for Dad, and he doesn't know what he wants...

I would like to get presents for all my friends, but I'm in debt enough as it is. I think I may get a job after Christmas, but it'll be hard to make it work with school. Guess we'll see.