I have not learned anything of value since May 5th, 2004, which was the approximate due date for the last of my undergrad assignments. I've worked one job for five months, tackled a two month internship prior to that, and do not feel I have learned anything memorable, anything that's made me feel more intelligent, or anything that's given me a sense of purpose. 8 months is a long time to feel mentally stagnant. During that time I've read books to try and feel stimulated... but without a general undercurrent of learning in my life I feel I've gotten far less from the experiences than usual.

Tomorrow is my last day at the mindless job which has taken away any semblance of intelligence that I thought I once had. Monday starts a new job, with new people, doing new things. There are responsibilities. Things that need to be learned. And while I'm still not 100% sure it's what I want to be working at for my entire life... the idea that I will be learning anything at all at this point is very, very welcome. I miss feeling passionate about life when I wake up in the morning. I miss living and breathing to learn and care about everything around me instead of keeping my gaze firmly set on my shoelaces while I meander around from point(less) A to point(less) B.

So far, being an "adult", at least in the sense that I'm through with college level learning, has been incredibly disappointing and sad. I'm hoping that this Monday is not another step in that same awful direction. *

Two quick other random things...

Firstly, I just received spam, in the form of a text message, sent to my cell
phone. "For a chance to win a free spring break trip..." Are you kidding me? What's next? "Feeling inadequate as a male? Dial 69 Send to find out about our wang enlargement pills.."

Secondly, did I really hear Wes Anderson in an ad for Guitar Center this morning? [terrible rap/metal being blared in the background] "Hi, I'm Wes Anderson. For a chance to win a Gibson guitar, autographed by me, stop by your nearest Guitar Center... and don't forget to see my newest movie, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, playing in theaters now." Has this world truly gone mad? --

PC Update: still not fixed. Not that anyone cares but me. (incircles... in 2005 celebrating six straight years of rambling about PC problems that nobody cares about). That's right, I've been doing this since '99.*

What records are people anticipating this new year? The only thing that comes to mind is the new Crooked Fingers, which just so happens to come out one day prior to my birthday. I predict that this will be the year that I further fall out of step with rock music and descend further into the depths of 'aging rock guy that liked all of those bands that played guitars in the Mid-90's'.*

My 24th birthday. The number 24 seems staggering to me. Like at one point in the past someone would've asked me about being 24 and I would've been able to equate it with a time in which cars would be flying, space travel standard, and robot maids being sold in the same department store aisles as common appliances (talking ones, of course). My parents were married and owned a home by the age of 24. This petrifies me. How in the world were people of that generation able to do that at 24? Isn't marriage complicated? What does this say about our generation... are we lazy? Are we smarter? I can count on one hand (two fingers) the guys that I'm friends with that are engaged.. and well, they're both lunatics. So hopefully it means that we're smarter.. or more patient.. and if that's so I guess I can understand why everyone was smoking pot in the 60's... how in the world can you all have been dumber than us? *

Amazing IT guy from work says that my hard drive is tip-top. Bootable, readable, and very secure and stable. I'm clueless... could it be as simple as a bad ribon or power being sent to the drive? I will have to investigate tomorrow on my day off (sorta) from work. *

The "sorta" is because it's a day off to attempt to get my butt back into an IT type role, as I mentioned in a previous post. Wish me luck. (anything at all will help when it comes to my luck) *

I've gotten pretty far into the songwriting process with a batch of songs that I'm really, really excited about. I've recruited two individuals to help me make it happen for real. I'm so obsessed with the progress of the tunes that my desk at work is littered with all kinds of insane notes to myself that pop into my head throughout the day.. "chorus needs to be Bb minor, G, A for two measures!... strummed like that Sicko song off of Chef Boy RU Dum" and "structure = 1X just guitar, 1X with bass and symbol crashes 2x all together, 4x with vocals before kicking into bridge to chorus." Yes, this is all jibber jabber.. but for the past few years I've written a four chord progression and passed it off as a "song". As in, "dude, i've got songs" or "hey babe, i've written dozens of songs". I've just recently really started finishing things the right way and I couldn't be more excited about it. I'm really ready to put my money where my mouth is this time. --

For better or worse... (i'm of the opinion that it leads towards worse) I haven't played videogames all that often lately. However, I have odd memories of experiencing the same sort of feelings that are addressed in this article from back when I did. The most severe case I had was when I was obsessed with creating my own world maps for Duke Nukem 3D. I remember looking around classrooms and my home intently to figure out which vents might be good for secret passageways and whether walls were "real" or "false". I even got so obsessed with looking around my own home that I spent about a month creating a level that was pretty much a replica of my house. Except for the secret passages, false walls, and dozens of dancing cheerleaders that were hidden in my ceiling.

The same goes for when I was rehauling BorisFX.com this time last year.. I was knee deep in Photoshop 7.0 for 10 hours a day and I'd get into bed and start thinking about using filters to change the texture of my ceiling and dying to make it 75% transparent using the layer menu.

I very much need to get into a technology-heavy type job again. I feel like a part of me is missing without it these days. --

Just wanted to thank everyone for the hard drive fixing tips. I've asked the amazing IT guy that covers my floor at work to take a look at my drive and he's going to take a stab at it later this week. At this point I just really want to save the things that are irreplaceable... digital camera photos, projects / papers that I wrote in college. Although 99% of my time is spent listening to music on my computer... losing an MP3 is nothing like losing that amazing digital camera photo I took of my roommates three years ago, etc. etc. Although it's not quite the same situation, when the fire in my apartment had just been put down by firefighters two summers ago and I was told "kid, you've got a about twenty minutes to get the hell in there and grab whatever means something to you"... surpisingly the things I grabbed first were probably worth the least. Aside from my guitars, there was really nothing of any monetary value that I grabbed that first load. Just pictures, important documents... sentimental things. It was warming to have made the right choice so obviously... it was very natural.

I feel kind of silly for not backing the things up that were on my hard drive, when I easily could have duped them onto my 80-gig slave at any point during the past few months, but with any luck I'll end up relatively unscathed just like I did two summer ago on Mission Hill.

It's been wonderful to see posts here that are not my own. *

Today I came home, turned on my PC, only to be greeted with an error message indicating that my two month old 250 gig hard drive had no intentions of booting. I tried a bazillion different things.. and no matter what I did could not find any data on it at all. That's every paper I've written since high school... over 5,000 mp3's, some of which (even in the age of file sharing) will be nearly impossible to replace, and digital photos going back 7 years. None of it was backed up and the thought of losing all of this stuff is seriously choking up. Yes, that's right... a whole bunch of fucking ones and zeroes is almost making me cry. Cheers to two lame cliches of my generation coming together in perfect unison... technology and melancholy.

So, Miss TFL, if you want me to hook you up with some happy pop tunes, keep your fingers crossed that the ace I.T. team I plan to employ on this case can get back those three-chord ditties comprised of ones and zeroes.

For now I'm booting to my older hard drive, which I've been using as a slave.. which for some reason is still bootable to Windows ME. *

The Copyrights, We Didn't Come Here To Die. Find it and listen to it now. Danny Vapid's brother on vocals. Grade A stuff. I also secured myself a copy of the long out of print LP Groovin' Hard by The Crash for $7. Aside from those ones and zeroes, it's been a pretty good week.

oy!

--------------5:46 PM 1/5/2005----------

im listening to bill hicks (amongst other things) today whilst contemplating life. salman just dropped another biscuit on my head, and i researched said biscuit, as i hope to be more inclined to do when biscuits come dropping.

someone went to canada recently, i dont know who this guy is, but he has a funny tale.

seems like everyone is getting sick, whether it be UTI's or the flu or both, time for immuno-shields or something. on an impulse i purchased some astro glide today, large 5 oz bottle. dont know what im gonna do with it but i know i need to own it. cost cutters has been having some weird sale on hockey cards, so i bought 4 boxes. now i have 4 boxes of hockey cards that are worthless. i spent ~100 dollars on these things. its kinda weird to spend money too, especially when you dont have any. definitely a form of coping with depression. i want my goddamn hockey back.

i have so many plans just waiting to take off, but im missing the ingredient one needs for off taking. oh yeah, motivation

pictures from the fray:
boozefire
drunknbusty
goodtimes
gulliver
joshdeadly
pookdome
vistajosh

i have nothing to do except take pictures and crop them with the gimp

ive been reading this book called ground beneath her feet, its really good and i like it. salman rushdie is a wizard. so far its all earthquakes at tequila distilleries and viscous prattling on greek and indian myth. but yeah, its good.

ive been playing a little bit of a game called uru, and its really successful at making me feel ignorant. i also play with my ipod alot, but hate the fact that i cant make an eq preset and have that preset save to my pod.

Today's iPod playlist (thus far):

Dirt Bike Annie - Show Us Your Demons
The Ergs! - Ben Kweller SP
Go Sailor - s-t (discography)
Sicko - A Brief History Of Sicko

Even with new "hip" and unlistened to tunes like the two new Bright Eyes
albums and the (i'm told) awesome Madvillain LP sitting within the caverns
of my massive 40-gig friend, I can't seem to stop listening to tasty bits
of pop-punk fun. The first two were new to me, and very enjoyable (although
I prefer the Ergs! full length) and the bottom two were loved gems that I
haven't listened to in way too long. I think there are two reasons for my
recent pop-punk revival: #1, I'm miserable and hate not being a student
anymore and am desperately searching for happy pop ditties that remind me
of being younger or #2, as I mentioned in my previous post.. all of the
songs I've been writing lately are very much in this vein. Regardless of
the reason.. something about constantly listening to and playing the type
of songs that I spent so many years of my life really enjoying has been
bringing a smile to my face even during the times when I might not have had
a lot to smile about. *

As Promised, my favorite ten albums of 2004 (or something, i guess):

* Ergs! - Dorkrockcorkrod
* Challenger - Give People What They Want in Lethal Doses
* Death From Above 1979 - You're A Woman, I'm a Machine
* Hot Snakes - Audit in Progress
* Thermals - Phuckin' A
* Methadones - Not Economically Viable
* Arcade Fire - Funeral
* Les Savy Fav - Inches
* Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days
* Detachment Kit - ... Of This Blood

.. honorable mentions to Interpol, Prefuse 73, and Dizee Rascal. *

I'm craving video games again. I need a good RPG to zap up all of my free time
and remind me why I stopped playing them in the first place. Tales Of
Symphonia perhaps?