Multi Slacking

Avoiding doing what you really should be doing, by doing a bunch of other things at the same time.

Blogging doesn't count.

Squanderrific Fabulust

The condition of needing to buy, as a silent emotional definition of one's purpose: conquering whichever store one's in by acquiring it's most desirable things.

Part of this also involves the emotional territory of having something, so someone else will *not* get it. It's actually use or utility or superiority to other objects is actually a side issue - a rationale rather than a reason.

There is within this also a touch of the gambler's high; the expression of the deathwish, the brush with chaos, the hanging-toes-over-the-edge-of-Hell feeling of spending one's wad on something cool.

Anyway, that new Mac touchscreen sure looks sweet.

Steve Martin - "That's all I need!"

Slacktivation

A sort of vapor-lock of the soul, in which the space of having nothing to do is so delicious that one extends it well past the point in time in which there is actually something to do.

So one is actually actively pursuing the avoidance of actively pursuing anything else.

Unclosed Dislocation

What Dick Cheney is apparently feeling on his eviction from the White House - an emotional dislocation which can't be resolved, and thus leaves him wounded and lost. By needing to be emotionally close to the power, he thus persuades him to think he has **any** credibility to criticize **any** other administration's national security policies.

See also: "National Insecurity".

Once again, this is what it's like to be addicted to ideas.

I have a lot to do today.

So I figured I'd just sit down and work on another little piece of music.

3 hours ago.

Strange Times

I love it. It's all off-time, with a groove. Maybe it's in 5/4 time? You know, standard 4/4 with an extra beat before it repeats? I still have to layer it and arrange it - it's a little confusing, all coming in at once. It would probably be much better served as a piece if the drums and bass came in first, and then the layering pads.

Also the drums are constantly changing in small ways, which I like. This is due to a "Random" setting within Ableton. There's more for me to learn there, as well. What I'd ideally like is to pair similar randomness with forcing it to play within a scale; and then have those scale notes trigger similar randomly-generated motifs. *Not* noise; within a scale, and within a direction even.

Then output the whole thing as midi and shape it into a fully composed piece.

Or, finish my scripts, or finish my novels, or finish the several movies I have unedited...and pursue my lifelong goal of creating a spiritual framework for understanding and being in line with the truth of pure information itself.

Or, do my errands. Which I'm about to, now that I feel recharged.

More music

The first distracting tunes of the New Year.

God, I love Ableton Live. At this rate I'll have the raw materials for a full album in about a week. During which time I'll also learn my next belt in Kung Fu, learn Flash, and solve the Unfied Field Theory (hint: the Strong Force is Love).


Highbrid
Annual Crazy Day

Buh-bye 2009, and the decade you rode in on.

Don't get me wrong (I'll get myself wrong on my own), a lot of good things happened in 2000-2009. Both for me personally and for a lot of people. Most importantly, all of us here are still alive and reasonably healthy. Far more than in any other time in human history.

But it sure seems that this decade had more than it's share of total freaking chaos. And lot of chaos-inducing crap that didn't need to happen if people were just paying attention. Yes I'm looking at you, Bush administration...and the just-over 50% of American voters who somehow re-elected you.

And what can you say about a decade that began with not even knowing who our President would be - for months?? A decade that is now bracketed on both sides with recessions bordering on depressions, a two-front war, and Britney Spears to boot?

In my own personal life, where my focus is probably more worthily spent, it's been a similarly crazy decade. Realistically, every decade of my life has been pretty crazy. But this decade, and in particular these past 6 months, have been especially ridiculous.

Reviewing the past is an infinitely-edged sword. One arbitrarily selects a number of years and examines them as if they are a cohesive unit. Rather than just a period in which a bunch of stuff happened. We still need to go through this process, in order to understand the present and then plan for the future - but we need to be aware that such a review can only be subjective. And very incomplete.

In other words, no matter what we guess about the causes, shit happens and it's done. In a real sense, the past doesn't even exist any more. Nor the future. All there is is the knife-edge of the present, expanding and contracting according to the scope of our focus. Just as all that really matters in the entire physical universe is the range we're focused on outside ourselves. We can focus on something as small as the fly on our hand, or as large as the jet plane we're flying in. Our focus can even expand to abstract concepts of impossible size such as nations, globe and species.

But no matter what bits of space and time we're focusing on, it's still just a bunch of stuff that is, and events that happen, that we move our way through and try to plan how to best come out the other side.

So, whew. With all of that in mind, I wish everyone (including me!) the best of all possible fortunes in this coming year, and coming decade, and all that moves forward after that.

Because life is beautiful and even existing is such a blessing that everything afterwards is parsley on the full and lovely plate.