On the road of life, watch where you're fuckin' going

Ladies, gentlemen, and germs of all shapes, sizes, genders, and kingdoms (especially you Mr.Ecoli, by the way I loved your last play), welcome to the show that never ends, The Rand Show! (not to be confused with the other show that never ends, something that Emerson, Lake and Palmer were talking about.) Anywho I write this having narrowly escaped death, since the universe did not implode, and it could at any moment now. On a slightly less death-defying note, but one which could have been if not deadly still much much worse than it was (it would have been, could have been worse than you would ever know), I got involved in a car accident. As the matter transpired very little damage was done, no injuries and while the ending monetary payments have not been made I'm unlikely to recieve any insurance penalties for this (unless the insurance company reads this session, but if they do I'm just glad that they are reading).

Now I could simply go into excuses, I was extremely tired from the promotion event I just did, I've been having insomnia, my medication's tireding me out somewhat, but honestly looking at the matter I can see that the mistake was my fault and it could have been prevented on several levels.

First of all, I could have not taken the promotion event job which I knew would require me waking up at four AM given my insomnia lately and my overall tired state. Given all that it would have made sense that driving would be dangerous with so little sleep and I should have said sorry but no. My justification is that I hadn't done a job for them for a while, but given my current state that isn't enough.

Second of all, I played Settlers with my brothers until around 1 am. My justication is that I forgot about the event, which is a pretty poor excuse any day of the week.

Third of all, I should have had a diet coke in the car while I was driving, true I drank caffine filled beverages before I drove but if I had it in the car I could have given myself an emergency boost.

Fourth of all, I should have pulled over, maybe got something to eat and drink when I was feeling that tired.

Fifth of all, I should make it a rule not to try to pass someone unless I'm fully alert.

Now why all this analysis, is it a matter of crushing guilt (as usually mistakes are with me)? No, actually not. I do feel guilty and I am sorry (people get pissed when you say sorry for a major mistake nowadays, but really what more is there to say in situations like this? It was all my fault? Same general expresssion except there are certain circumstances where even if you might need to be more sorry than the other person but the blame still must be shared. You can say it won't happen again, but with a major mistake isn't it a given that you're going to try to stop it from happening again, and honestly it's rare that you can ever guarentee something won't happen again. Overall, sorry is usually the most appropriate word after a major mistake even if it is often annoying to hear when you're the one who suffers from the mistake), however, I do not feel the crushing guilt I felt, say after my previous car accident (again not fatal, but with more damage than this one). But if a person is sorry I think he shouldn't simply ignore what has been done and push it aside, but rather think about why the mistake happened and what can be done to prevent it in the future (if someone doesn't want to hear sorry you could tell them all the things you're going to do to prevent the mistake from happening in the future (if you can think of any besides trying harder) but that can often take a long time and just irritate the other guy more).

So that's what I'm doing, I'm looking back and thinking like a wild man chasing the wind. Well, since I've started to cease to make as much sense as a wombat in a wildebeast cage it probably is time for me to wrap things up and get some much needed sleep (perhaps what I can take most from this is my need for sleep, but given that my various reasons that I have problems sleeping at night have not gone away and that I've been trying to get more sleep for some time now, I'm not sure how much will get done on that front).

So anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Sometimes you're trukin' and sometimes you're trucked

My deepest apologies for my highly irregular posting schedule lately, I have been deeply considering my various plans for various things and various matters indeed. Plus there are matters of sickness and depression and busy-ness and etc., etc., indeed. But that is a matter of that and matter is matter except when it matters.

If I seem a bit strange of tongue today it is likley because I am beat, highly beat in fact, extra-special highly beat (actually not really that beat). The event which has drained my energy was a 5-hour drive today that should have taken 1 hour and ended at WRAT rock radio station. Instead I drove around and around and got well near Delaware before the radio station texted me and told me that I should just go home. So I'm pretty damn annoyed. And beat. Beatity beat beat.

Now, however, if I think about it rather more deeply however, I wonder why I am so displeased with this turn of events. I generally like driving, but driving this much is often exhausting and well boring, especially along roads that often look very similiar. But work at the station is often tedious and hard work, and probably would have taken longer time than my long driving trip. It is very well possible that I would have to do more annoying work (say emptying out a van or something) at the WRAT than I would just driving. And yet driving aimlessly was so much more irritating that a day of work at the WRAT, even a bad day of work at the WRAT (well no, a bad day would be more annoying, but a tedious day, one which was more tedious than driving, would still be better if it was working).

The reason for this I think, is the same reason that working at the day camp last summer was more annoying than my duties at the WRAT, despite the fact that task per task most of the work was easier. When I work at the WRAT I get a sense that I am building an institution that I like a good deal. I like the WRAT. It plays good music, it has good atmosphere, it is a fun place with good people. So even if the jobs are sometimes fun or unpleasant I get a joy from working there.

I'm not sure if I could get that sort of enjoyment from say a label-making company. I didn't really have that much attatchment to the day camp, and so it was more annoying, and a random faceless coporation would give me a lot less emotional connect than the day camp. I mean it would depend on my tastes matching the company (I could see how other people could get emotionally attatched to that day camp, but there my tastes did not match the corporation). I wonder how my life will be if I can't make a living as journalist I'll probably need to take a corporate job, I just hope it's at a corporation I like rather than one I don't like.

But even if I don't like the corporation, that is not the end of me. There are countless stories of people being drained of their lives by working at jobs they hate, and it is very possible (though overall not likely) that I could take a job that I hate. But I still can write in my private time, I still can hang around with my friends, I can still strive to become a writer. Even with a tasteless job, I need not lose the taste of my life. I need not lose my soul, if I simply refuse. And I can always refuse to die, at least in the part of myself that is most important.

I can be only meeeee

Johnny Johnny Man
I've got to be a Johnny man
Johnny Johnny Man
I've got to be a Johnny man

Always somewhat popular
Always da man
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Johnny Johnny man
I've got to be a Johnny Man!

Still rockin in the free world

I'm still around, I've just been a little bit sick, a little bit depressed and a little bit unsatisfied with the way some of my projects, personal life, and professional life has been going. But that just means a little extra truckin is in order. I'm still figuring some stuff out about what I want to do about what, and so I might be busy somewhat lately, but in the future I want to not just keep up a reliable every day posting but also improve the quality of my posts which I feel has slipped (unfortunately, I can do little about the quality of my readers, you bums, but I love you anyways). Anywho, I'm working on that, as well as on a revamp and restart for my comic, which I might be renaming from the cool sounding but a bit hard to remember (especially spelling-wise, which can be important on the World Wide Web), Comikier, to the easier to remember The Rand Show. It might sound a little too Rand-centric, but I'll take the risk I suppose, maybe. If so I'll be able to call myself a triple threat in my Rand persona alone, since I'll have a webpost, a comic, and well, I'll actually have to wait for this to come through before I can ascribe it to myself, but hopefully next year I'll be getting my own radio show, so get pumped for it, yes, The Rand Show on the radio.

For now, while you wait, check out some of my old posts in the archives, very little of it is topical crap (and even then there usually is something that remains interesting today), and so I like to think my posts have a little bit of a timeless quality (I like to think that, whether it's true or not, well find out you stinkin' bums (yeah I know you stink, I can smell you, smell you through the INTERNET)).

Also check out The World of Rand

Until we meet again, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

OVA won't you play

As any anime fan knows OVAs (only for video releases, basically straight to video tv shows) tend to beat regular tv shows in quality. I always wondered why we didn't have them in the US. Now in fact we are actually starting to see some with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Futurama planning straight to video releases. But in Japan you have shows that have never had any precedent on regular tv released on video, and that is still unlikely to happen. I understand now why though. Most OVAs are released piecemeal, one episode at a time, afterall it's difficult to invest a lot of money unless you know the project is going to go well, and the production time on a full OVA series is often immense. In Japan, where people I think are more comfortable with buying mass quantities of videos and DVDs, that might work, but in the US most people are going to see buying a single episode of a show they haven't seen a bit of a rip. I know I would. On the other hand there are some non-mainstream niches where OVA stuff does well, where mainstream TV doesn't usually go. But I suppose we'll never have a OVA market as rich and diverse as Japan as long as the US is full of cheap-skates like me.

Musically speaking, I AM MUSIC

I love AMVs (anime music videos) on you tube. I always loved them even when I could only get a hold of some old Otakon videos. I always found it nice to see top notch animation combined with top notch music. And then there were the odd juxapositions that brang a smile to my face. But with you tube, you can get a really nice selection of AMVs. Best of all, since I'm incredibly lazy when it comes to buying music whenever I want to listen to an old song I can just look up the AMV. AMV's are also nice for exposing to new animes, that's how I first got interested in Neon Genesis Evangelion, for example.

It's not just a crappy new Korn song

Let me start out by saying I think evolution is the general cause of species differenciation, etc., etc. I like evolution, it's got a nice logic to it, it's a neat idea that might not appear naturally but once you understand it you're like duh! People inherit traits from their parents. Some traits are more likely to get people laid than others. Those traits are passed on in a larger number. Over time those traits become dominant among the species. Given long enough time and enough traits, you have a completely new species. Now beyond that basic theory of evolution there's a lot of fine tuning. One of the main complaints of the creationist crowd is that there is too much diversity to be explained by slow evolution. But on that matter, Stephen Jay Gould, gives some good explanation with his refinements of the theory and there are plenty of other refinements which while not completing a perfect account of everything in the world gives a pretty reasonable account of much of biological history. Sure there are questions still to be resolved, but they aren't ones that are that beyond our capacity. Well, that is excluding the really big questions like the ultimate why, and some of the most deep hows. But evolution works pretty good.

Creationism actually is pretty dangerous to religion as it fulfills all the criticism of the anti-religious that religion is just for filling up the blank spaces in science. That is not the case, but Creationists play into the stereotypes. Religion actually has several important purposes, greatest of which, is offering the ultimate whys for doing things, or at least some of the penaultimate whys (that depends on what you define as religion and if you put as a why the reason for choosing a particular religion and your reasons for choosing, of course with perhaps the ultimate ulimate why, reason is perhaps unable to suffice). One of the alleged replacements for this however, is the idea of evolutionary morality, that evolution has given us enough morality. I have some serious flaws with this. First of all, I'm a little skeptical about some of morality preached by religion. But more importantly, evolution offers no real reason to follow it. Evolution offers a course of action, but we can always refuse it, afterall some specimens have to fail the evolutionary test for there to be any change in the species.