Influential Albums

My Early Musical History

"Weird Al" Yankovic's Greatest Hits I have my father to thanks for this influential middle school Christmas gift, which influenced me to be even more of a dork.

Crash Test Dummies Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm Must have been Sally's or John's. Classic, though.

Bush - Sixteen Stones Loved it. Even if I didn't really know what glycerine was.

Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream I lost this one at Whitney Cowling's birthday party (like 13th or so). I was saddened.

The Beatles Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, Revolution I'd listen to my dad's records on the record player I kept in my mom's special ed classroom at my middle school while I'd wait on her after school.

Mineral EndSerenading I first starting coming into my own musical tastes when my brother John bequeathed this gem upon me that I think he acquired as part of Juniper Distribution he put together for him and his posse to order cd's for cheaper. It was a little mellow and matched my mood pretty well. This was about the time I talked my dad into buying me my first pioneer amp for my birthday (and Christmas). It was the best gift ever (next to Emily's full body massage), but what made it even better was the 25 disc CD player that we got from the same place for around 25 or 50 bucks. And my dad let me use his huge speakers, too. That's when I started jamming hard.

Cursive Such Blinding Stars For Starving Eyes. John had this on vinyl and it rocked my world. I remember one time chilling in my room jamming this album and watching a lizard on a branch outside my window. We made eye contact.





Sunny Day Real Estate Diary One of the first and only CD's I've ever purchased myself. I think I can name them all right now: 2) Get up Kids Something to Write Home About, 3) MXPX Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo a regrettable impulse buy on a science club trip at a mall up here south of Atlanta, 4) Last of the Mohicans Soundtrack, 5) Eddie Bauer Christmas, 6) The Empties (my cousin's band), 7) John Ralston Sorry Vampire (at a show), 8) The Stationary Set Don't Forget in the Darkness What You Saw in the Light (also at a show), 9) At the End of All Things It's never too Late 10) Sound on Film.

Get up Kids Something to Write Home About I bought this and listened to it on the way up to the state Science Olympiad competition held at Emory University. I almost won the cow-a-bungee competition after calculating how much phone wire to use to drop the weight as close to the target as possible without touching, but then I added one extra loop because I didn't want it to not be close enough...but it grazed the target and we were disqualified!! One of the low points in my life. But this CD was some awesome listening on the school bus.

I Hate Myself 10 Songs Great record. I would come home from a long hard day of school and club meetings and soccer practice and just crash with a little I Hate Myself lulling me to sleep. This was back when I was learning how to record records into mp3's. I later used this knowledge to transfer some songs a lady wanted to be played at her funeral from cassette tapes.


The Promise Ring Nothing Feels Good John let me have this one because he was starting to get a sense of what music I liked. I remember listening to it as I walked home one day from a JV soccer game at Bazemore-Hyder stadium to his house across the street from VSU fine art's building on a lazy Saturday afternoon. I wonder why no one picked me up...


Third Eye Blind Third Eye Blind "Man, this CD's so good. I hope I never don't like it" - from a conversation me and my best friend Drew had in his room while rocking this classic.
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So I guess you could say these were just some of the gateway drugs that got me hooked on music, that would lead me down the path of Napstering and Limewiring and g2p'ing. But I guess that's for another day.

Apologies: Back Posts Release

I think it's bad form to just make a bunch of posts at once and not allow people the time they need to digest my thoughts and figure out a point related to what I was talking about but not quite able to get to. But, let's face it, I'm just not going to go back and edit or add stuff to old posts that I've started. I'm just not really the revising type. So those last few posts are thoughts that I've started over the last few months. Maybe one day I'll finish them. But until then, why not share them? (I mean, who really has anything against sounding like an idiot? Obviously not me.)

Television: Experience Substitute or Endorphin Tap

It's interesting the role that television plays in the modern lifestyle. Purists can easily dismiss it in their own minds as a complete waste of time. I sometimes feel the pull of that mindset on my own feelings as well, but television (and in particular, I guess, television programming) is a complex beast. I sometimes feel like TV is just a cop-out, a way to avoid life and do nothing, an excuse to be lazy, similar to world of warcraft. But deep down inside I think TV is a way to expand your own experience, to observe situations others face (fictional people are people, too), which can be a very meaningful thing. God sent us here to Earth to gain experience. In some way I think we can gain experience from TV or books or other substitutes that bring situations to mind that we may never face in real life.
That's my for TV part of my brain speaking. But there's a huge problem here- more and more media is produced that has no link to reality. I'm not talking about how people in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon fly through the air jumping on building tops. Even fantastical stories or settings can have their own analogies to real life situations or emotions. Popular TV shows and movies seem to be increasingly dilute of these things, shrouded in absurdities and obscenities, so that rather than empathizing with the characters viewers are merely "entertained". I will be the first one to tell you that I do get sucked into that myself, though. Sometimes it just feels good to get stupid and net nearly nothing after watching something like Hot Rod or Anchorman other than a good release of endorphins triggered by laughing and a few quotables (which benefit me nothing since I was born without the ability to successfully quote a single line from a movie...so I usually stick to short phrases or single words). But that's really kind of the point- if the changing trends in media released on TV can release chemicals in our bodies to make us feel good while delivering nothing beneficial to our souls then it is becoming more of a drug and less of a tool for learning from experiences you never would have had in the normal course of your own life.
So I'm really just saying that I have conflicted feelings about TV and movies, but I really do like watching something good!

The Santa Myth

So it's all innocent and fun to lie to little kids to add a sense of excitement in their lives and stuff, right?...No, I'm not going to take that angle on this whole issue. I don't really care about making up stories for kids. But, I did have an interesting thought about the real implications of perpetuating the "Santa Myth"...but I'm not talking about the implications for kids, necessarily, like you might expect this to go. I'm thinking more in terms of everyone, big kids especially. Or, should I say, good big kids especially. Doesn't having this idea that Santa is going to bring you presents if you are good somehow connected to a feeling of entitlement to splurging a little for yourself during the holiday season after you've found out that Santa's not really going to come through on that childhood promise after all? I've been good all year. Don't I deserve something for being good? I think that the whole idea of Santa may be connected to this economic crisis we're in. Isn't it driven by outrageous consumer debt that people have pulled themselves into, the $5,000 or so every American on average is packing around? Maybe it is a little far fetched, but I'm sure that somehow it plays a part, the idea of deserving something more, even though you straight up ain't got the cash homeslice. What ever happened to, "yeah, that'd be cool, but I ain't got the money"?
The truth is there are tons of good people out there. And, unfortunately, most of them are not living the dream. Unfortunately being good most often is not correlated with having everything you want. I think it's especially difficult for Americans to grasp this concept. I mean, think about it. If everything feel out from under financially what would be the first things to go? Even if you only had to pick a handful of things to give up. Your cell phone? Gas money? Your car? Health insurance? Cable? Movies? Eating out? Internet? New clothes? Furniture? Water? Electricity? There are just so many things involved in what we see as our way of life that we can hardly imagine living without...but we're definitely in the minority there. Pick any handful of those things I just listed and there's half the world going without them. What makes you and me so special? Why do we deserve them?
I guess this thought came to mind because somehow it seems that everything I want I just end up with at some point, but I realized, "Hey, I don't got a job. Where's all this stuff coming from?" But, anyway, maybe if I didn't not believe in Santa Claus I wouldn't have just bought myself a new digital SLR camera. That's all I'm saying.


Food for Thought
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/money101/lesson9/
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/07/20/business/20debt-trap.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3988036n

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Well, after writing this thing and talking to my good friend Sara Snow I've decided that if you're going to deceive your children with a myth why not engineer the thing so it does some good and avoids the pitfalls I just brought up.
So here's my idea.
The whole problem is the myth undermining the sense of needing to work for what you get and creating that empty sense of entitlement. So...simple. Just throw in an addendum to your kids that tells them that they are Santa's elves! Make them make the presents!! Figure out things that would be fun for the other kids to receive that each kid can make, but don't tell that kid who the intended present is for. Then, Christmas eve Santa just pull the ole' swaperoo (and probably throw in some real presents that other more skilled elves have made...in China).
I think this scheme will make the whole Santa myth more exciting and just more awesome: they have a secret project to work on for a few weeks leading up to Christmas and then Santa, the disseminator of all gifts Christmas, uses their junk they made as a part of worldwide underground network of normal people elves. Not only will they gain a greater sense of empowerment and stuff like that at an earlier age, but the gifts themselves will have more meaning.
Cons to this scheme: this route definitely takes more thought and effort on the part of parents. Doing things with as little thought and effort possible is a popular thing in this country, but that's an issue for another day...

Right here I'm going to go ahead and admit, this whole thing might just be a stupid idea, but I have no qualms with using a stupid idea as a placeholder 'til I can get a hold of a better one to take it's place.