Thursday 21 October 2010

Frazzled

Reality is a little inconvenient at times - there simply isn't time to piss about all evening, and get all my work done, AND get at least 7 hours sleep, yet that is exactly what I want to do! But, as I said, reality doesn't allow such things. Another thing that's plaguing my peace of mind is how it's hard to stop anyone being annoyed these days - there's always someone somewhere with a silly little grudge. And it's... silly. So I take it all out on my new piano :D

This beautiful specimen of a digital piano is currently standing elegantly on the opposite side of the room to me. I have to say, money for value-wise this is one of the best buys I've made, and I've bought, amongst other things, an iPod, red converse boot things for £1.50, and a straw trilby, all of which I absolutely adore. And this tops them aaaaaall dudes. It's got about 10 different settings, not including dual and split voice, and this funky thing that makes the sustain pedal create the effect of a real grand piano with the reverberation of the other strings! Sweeeeeeet.

Have to say though, it's made all the better by the pieces suggested to me by my friends - special mentioning of Emma Dooley is appropriate here - because I owe a lot of my musical tastes to them. New favourite song is Letters From The Sky by Civil Twilight, which is great to bash out while screeching the falsetto parts :D so I think I'm gonna go do that now I think. Toodles guys x

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Me, roughly

My life is honestly unrecognisable from what it was in 2009, and 2011 is coming on fast. Despite this, I still feel I don't live life fully enough... I try my best though :D Anyways, the point of this post is that I want to record some of how everything feels flipped and turned around every which way in a little more than a year.

Most significant in all that's happened to me is the amazing way in which my relationships with the rest of humanity have developed, and the amazing way in which the number of them has increased too. I've gone from feeling like an awkward, antisocial idiot to feeling like an overly open, overly social idiot, and it's great to be honest! The friends I've made make every day fun and exciting, and the friends I've kept make every day worthwhile - make every day precious. Well, I don't want to divide old and new so definitely, because I can think of a number of people who achieve both of those things... but for the sake of poeticism, I'll leave it as that.

There have been a few special cases of relationships in my past which haven't been quite as joyful, but were still valuable. I've matured greatly as a result of these, and the lessons I've learned have carved out my personality and values to a great extent. I now hold forgiveness in higher esteem than ever before, along with forthright honesty and, whenever possible, fairness. I've seen too many people angry and upset following disputes - emotions that could be so simply resolved with these three things. It may seem hard or impossible in a time of conflict to forgive someone without reservation or hesitation, but the alternative is to walk away hurt, and there is simply no time to waste being hurt when there are so many good things in the world to live for. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to start a religion here, I'm just trying to share my experience and my convictions, so that others might live better and might understand me better do. So yeah... think about that one.

But this is all terribly depressing, so I'll cut that short. On a far merrier note, my hobbies and interests - I've gone from being apathetic towards music practice to owning my own damn piano :D And even a ukulele! I feel as though I'm about to take off on the path to musical stardom, were it not for the fact I'm still lazy and don't practice... ah well. I'll still play you a song any time all the same!

Y'know, I really can't be arsed with a post encompassing my entire psyche and experiences, so I'll continue a theme and cut this entire thing short. One last thing though: I laugh REALLY loudly, though that's been building up for years.

Over and out xx

Too long, Too short

I have left this endeavour too long unattended, and this post will be far too short to make up for it.

But I want the three people following this to know, I'll be updating shortly :P

Sunday 4 April 2010

Weeeeeeeeeeeeebl

Right, I do actually feel the need to share this. For about 5 years now, I have been following the work of one Jonti Picking, also known as Weebl - yeah, one of those toys with a weight in the bottom. I didn't actually know what a weebl was until several years after I started watching his stuff, when my friend Danny spent every science lesson for a week trying to convince me what one was. I thought it was just another of his crazy schemes, like trying to convince people he still couldn't read analogue time...

Anyway.

I do now believe him, and I also realise why Weebl's most original and most popular creation of 'Weebl and Bob' are shaped as they are:


Yeah, like that. Weebl and Bob, along with many of his other creations like "Badgers" (badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger MUSHROOM MUSHROOM) and more recently "Amazing Horse" (all I shall say is that it turns back again when you tug on its winky. Nuff said) have been a genuine light in my life ever since I discovered them. They provide a paradise of merriment and immaturity to me in an increasingly serious and grown-up world, and possibly the best thing about these toons is that they will forever remain as such to me - silly voices and toilet humour will always have a home on weebls-stuff.com, a home that I can visit at any time I so wish.

It really doesn't do the man justice just to talk about his effect on me, and provide a critique of his work in far too adult a style to be suitable for the subject. So go check it out, this wonderful fortress of silliness courtesy of Mr Weebl, and laugh and giggle and cringe to your heart's content, and see life as it should be - silly, with no restraints.

Friday 2 April 2010

Stories, Stories Everywhere

I think of odd things in my free time! This is one of those things.

They're funny things, really, knowledge and memories and such like. We perceive them everywhere around us, in every object and movement, everything we observe is saturated with them. But they hold no substance, and only exist within our own minds - and us such, their potential quantity is nearly infinite.
What I mean by this is that the memories, the stories if you will, beholden to a specific object are potentially huge in number - an object and its components could have any degree of significance to any person. Take for example the iPod - a person owns this single object, and probably has a massive number of memories just of that person using it. But what about looking on other levels - what about the stories behind each one of the thousands of songs? What about the ideas that have gone into the creation of each line, each bar of music; the effort gone into the editing and production of each track; the careful planning of the release of every single or album... so many stories, and within the memories and people involved, whole lives connected to just a single piece of music, and yet the circuits and chips in this incredibly tiny piece of gadgetry hold them all. And it doesn't stop there. The expertise, knowledge and inspiration required for every circuitboard within the iPod itself, physically, and every microchip too; the thought and care gone into the choosing of materials of the casing, the wiring, the insulation; again, the meetings and brainstorms and sales pitches just to bring all the people together and create a final product... The sheer scale of it is impossible to fully comprehend, and that is just in a single iPod. There are backstories to every building, every room, every piece of furniture, every grain of wood and block of stone, and we wander around knowing so little of it all!

It's scary to think of how much there is to know, and how impossible it is to know even half of it. It's sad to think that the majority of the stories and the knowledge is lost, gone from any memory of archive and never to be known again. And it's strange to think that so much of this knowledge is totally irrelevant and unimportant to so many people, but a lot of it is the story of someone's life, and every little bit of knowledge in some way affects and dictates the events of the here and now.
And we write books and fictions devoted to things that have never happened at all, and these are granted more significance than the knowledge of actual events and people's lives!

I fear I've rather lost the thread of any kind of purposeful narrative now, but it's food for thought. Au revoir!

Thursday 1 April 2010

It's like a diary people can read...

Well it isn't really, what it's like is a log, like a ship's log, on the web. A web log. A wog, or a leb, or a... Oh, I see, a blog.

I have decided to try this shizzle out on the sound advice of a wise but wacky friend of mine, so I'll see how it goes. There really isn't much to chronicle at the moment - I've spent the past few days on Easter holiday doing a well deserved nothing at all.

As I said, we'll see how this goes.