Cause you can't spell Rand Show without Rand

So I've been away. The first week or two I can excuse through finals and graduation (Wooo! Graduated! Thank you Lord!), but there's still a week or so which I can only say I chose not to post anything. Why such a thing?

Well, like I've said before, writing these posts, even if no one reads them, is something productive for me, and I have been ambivalent about being productive. With college and all over with, I no longer have a definite pressing obligation toward working (other than the fact I'm sucking up my parents money), and so I can drift a little bit, a bit detached from it all. There's something terribly peaceful about being detached from everything.

(Quick reference: watch the Fountainhead movie (you can read the book, but even if you're not a fan of Ayn Rand, the movie's pretty cool), there's a scene where the female lead drops a beautiful Greek sculpture down a garbage shoot, when asked why, she says because I loved it. Ties of love are ties that bind)

Well, as I noted in my reference above, ties of love are ties that bind. When you engage in anything productive you take on responsibilities to maintain such things or have the pain of watching them fade. As CS Lewis once noted, the only place the heart is at peace outside of heaven is in hell.

So there is that peace of utter lack of care in detachment. But screw peace.

So bit by bit I'm trying to shake off this feeling of, and a certain visceral desire for, detachment so I can start living again. And this is one step, and I have taken others, and I will take others.

And step by step, onto the silver sea.

Until the last step must be taken by us all.

And then if we're lucky, the steps will be a staircase to the kingdom in the sky.

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

And God Bless.

Because I can't, I won't and I don't stop

In the morning I get up and do the getting up sort of thing... but alack, alack, alack, despite the whole getting up thing I have not been doing the whole blogging thing (that's right, I'm giving up my war against the word blog, while I think webpost is superior it is tougher to verborize and adjectivize and it has shown no sign of taking over the market yet... oh well, alack, alack, alack).

Perhaps because of anxiety and depression massive problems, or the massive amount of stuff I have to do in the aftermath of it all.

So it goes.

But I deny the impulse to fail and say Hurrah!!!

As Barney always says,

"When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead."

Exactly, man, exactly.

We need a long burn

Ah the burning sleepiness of the insomniatic, overworked, under-energized, madman wonder-worker!

And you wonder why I haven't posted lately!

But I will, I will, I WILL!!!

Do not fear, Rand remains here.

And if you want to get more of the good old Randishness while I'm out being lazy and/or tired, you can check out my other webposts:

http://johnhistoryman.blogspot.com
http://mathimoto.blogpsot.com

But soon, soon I say, even later this day, I WILL POST AGAIN!!!

YOU CAN BE SURE OF IT!!!

In the end, it's St. Valentine's Day again

St. Valentine's Day always brings up a lot of feelings for me. And there's a lot I can say about it. Yet much of what I want to say about it, old and new, I have said elsewhere. Perhaps it's cheating a little to direct you elsewhere, but perhaps given all the complicated feelings with this holiday I don't necessarily want to deal with, I deserve a little cheating.

So let me direct you to some writings of mine:

Here's the St.Valentine's Day post I did last year, and the post of the day before Valentine's which I think was inflected by the Valentine's Day mood.

Here's my History webpost's session on Valentine's Day.

And here's my Math webpost's session on St. Valentine's Day.

Now I will depart
For my feelings of today I will not start
And if I am being lazy
Well, otherwise I would still be hazy
And if that's what you prefer
Well, other days I would concur
But today
I say no
No more shall I say
Except have a good night
On this St. Valentine's Day

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

Pulling away, but just a little

So I don't have a post today for the Rand Show, but that's because I've been trying to get some other stuff going. And if you want to check out that other stuff, please kind sirs, be my guest.

My History webpost

My Math webpost

Check it out now, because the funk's your brother.

Dance! Dance! Now where's my revolution buddy?

I've been talking about plans and the future and stuff a lot lately, however, unlike my previous bouts of future-philia there is a reason for that.

I am planning to make big changes to things. And hopefully, if I actually get off my ass and do them, they should come to pass.

Big plans:
Multiple webposts:

History man (I might change the name, the current name I have for it is Years Like Grains of Dust or something of the like): A history-focused webpost. I've done occasional history-centered webposts from time to time, but I've never expected the audience here to be focused on that. Moreover, I've never used the prompt of necessity to make myself write more about history. I'm a little bit scared of unleashing that potent prompt, but no pain no gain. Check out the first introductory post here.

Mathimoto's complaint (or something of the like): A math-focused webpost. There's a dearth of good math-centric webposts on the web as a whole. I'm aiming to fill that void with a vengeance. I'm talking interesting math facts, quick math lessons, math news, math history, the works. I might also be able to get some other math folk to help out with this.

Rand Reviews: Basically a focus on my reviews, with also my AMV reviews and maybe some webpost pointers. Mainly just getting away from my personal stuff and philosophy stuff for people who aren't as interested in that. Also, it's a way to force me to do more reviews and such.

The Rand Show: I'm hoping to keep this going strong, but with more emphasis on my personal philosophy, my religion, and my take on the world as it turns. Although I might have to clip some parts of what I have now. The work world isn't the best place for dealing with certain things, and since more job places are getting more intense in searching the web for who you are, I might have to take a censorship axe to some of my older stuff.

Also, a possibility: The Rutgarian. My thoughts on Rutgers and such. The limitation with that though would be, I'm graduating in a semester. I think part of the reason I'm feeling so much Rutgers pride is that I've gotten used to this place and am a little afraid of leaving, but there's a whole world out there, and it's not going to conquer itself (or will it? Dunn Dunn Dunn!!!).

Also, a Rand art webpost. I'm planning to make a big push with the comic soon, and I've also been drawing a lot otherwise. My camera's now working and I'm trying to learn some video editing skills. So I'm hoping all that stuff will end up on the site, but the problem with that is: Some people are more readers than lookers, and some people (like me when I have to deal with the highly interesting but image and clip-saturated webpost The House Next Door) get tired by slow, slow upload times due to massive files located on a swebsite. Answer: Secondary website where those giagantic files can roam free.

Other plans:

GET A JOB!!! (Yeah, I'm going to need to do that, and so some of these high-flying plans might need some trimmin').

Sellin' some T-shirts!!! Woo!!!:
I've never been opposed to selling out, well, as long as I can still do stuff at my quality level or reasonably close. But so far, busy and lazy have kept me from doing so. And yet here's something which I can do with relatively little effort, so perhaps you'll see some of that sometime pretty soon.

Getting more webbish: it's time I got more into the 21st century, especially since some parts of me are more 19th century. So I'm learning so web apps and such and I'm trying to borrow my way into the general web community. Look out web, you're about to get Randerzized.

So those are my plans. As I've said I've been talking a lot about them lately and so I'm going to try less about them from now on unless I actually have something significant to say about them. But stay tuned, because I AM RAND!!!! And that makes me just plain awesome.

And because of my great and glorious awesomeness I've deigned to give you a treat:

Here's TURK (of Scrubs fame) DANCING!!!!

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

Blinded by the light

And moreover the future's so bright I've got to where shades.

That's from a song by Timbuck3 and the actual title line is from a Bruce Springsteen's song (more famously covered by Steven Miller), both of the same name. However, with the Springsteen song I always thought the second line was something like "revved up like a douche," which if you think about it makes no sense what-so-ever. But as it turns out it is "cut loose like a deuce" which seems to refer to a car called a "deuce coup" which is apparently a very fast car. So that's that.

As I've been saying things are looking good, but with good times always comes, blah, blah, blah

Enough of that.

LET'S DANCE!!!!!

Here's a nice song with that lovely sentiment. (also known as the opening for episode 00 of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (which I reviewed here)

Now I'm trying to reduce a little of my over-plannerizing, but let me tell you guys a leetle beet about some stuff I've been planning:

Multiple webposts.

Now I know I've promised this before (and I'm not just taking about the mySpace, Blogger.com doubling I've got now), but previously my idea was doing different webposts as different characters from my various stories, but that's actually a bit harder than I thought it would be, with less growth potential (I think, I might actually retry that sometime). My new idea is to try to hit up the niche webpost market and make a history webpost, a math webpost, a media review webpost, and maybe a comp. sci. webpost in addition to maintaining this for my personal thoughts, ideas, philosophy, religion, etc.

Except that's a boat-load of work.

That would also be a pain to look through for someone who wanted to read a variety of my stuff so I'm probably going to include the other posts on this page as well. If it all sounds confusing, it is, but on the plus side my plans should give me a lot more readers and allow me to actually have some respectable posts that I can write in my own name.

Maybe.

But then again, I'm not a very respectable type of guy.

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

And the road goes on and on and on and on

So I've done quite a bit of transferring of the mySpace posts to the blogger.com account. And while that was incredibly irritating it was still pretty damn cool to get a lot of the old stuff out. However looking back at the old posts, it was a kind of strange. I suppose it's a bit of an evolution of my personality, or at least the bit of my personality that's Rand. I mean Rand isn't exactly who I am to the surface of the world. But well Rand is me, just the different parts of me in a different configuration and ordering.

It's not quite I don't like who I was, in fact I really like some of the sessions I did even as much as a year ago, but again, I notice certain things. For example, as I go back down in my sessions, I've noticed that I've been a little bit more bitter in the past. Also, I guess I seem a little overly obsessed by my mood and such. I suppose looking back allows me to be a bit of introspection. What I really figure I guess, is that I need to learn to get a bit better about the past and the future. Things aren't so bad really, and I haven't done such a bad job of things as life goes.

As I was talking with my brother, life is always so beautiful, that's the soul really, a shard crafted in the image of God, even imperfect it is still damn beautiful. And even if it's short or tragic, even the tragedy is beautiful even if it's sad beauty. And even in the sadness, it's not that life isn't beautiful, it's that life could be so much more beautiful if things were just a little better. But I suppose the way things work out, the sadness and the joys all combined, it's as good as it gets this world, even with the tragedy.

Dude, that's deep dude.

Dude....

Anywho, that's about three sentences too much of that, so take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

GET PUMPED! FINALS!!!

Can't say I'm greatly happy with my more recent posts, but I can't say I've been happy with the necessity for intensive studies for finals. But that'll be over soon, and hopefully my sessions will improve after that's all done then, but after that I might be busy with trips and such. Oh well, such is the way of the world. In the longer course of things I need to develop a greater discipline in writing and do on-time quality sessions without fail (perhaps for multiple webposts) and then bonus it all with a page or more of drafting for some stories and such. But if I'm aways from that goal, I'm trying to get closer and I think I am bit by bit. Perhaps, maybe, we'll see I suppose and all.

Well, one final done and one to go. I have to say I'm not greatly impressed with my performance on my Number Theory final. It was a ton to remember but with at least one of my errors I should have been able to remember if not exactly what to do for the proof the general methodology that would have led me to the right answer. Not that most of you will be caring terribly about the details, but I'd say I probably are going to get around a 85, but my range could go from a 70-90, or beyond. As for the course itself B probably, but overall a total range of F-A. It really depends on how much my missed homeworks hurt me (to be honest I've asked for some consideration on the matter, it has been a long semester with emotions/mental health and all and I think overall I probably deserve some consideration for the matter, although I'm always unsure if I truly deserve any of the breaks I get for my mental health problems).

But that's that.

And so I might get through all this and I might not.

But really, as it goes, school isn't the deciding factor of how I'm going to get through my life.

Then what is school really?

Well, as I've said before, I've always thought of school as a matter of a game (well, no I haven't always thought about it like that, but that's how I'm trying to think about it nowadays).

And now I've actually thought up a justification for that impression.

Alright, where else but school and games do you do a combination of easy, tedious, and mind-blowingly difficult tasks that have little to no impact on the real world even though there is a reward (although the reward is pretty damn valuable, and so the game is worth some importance and highly worth seizing in oppotunity talk) at the end of the contest.

Thus school = game.

Think about it.

Anyways, still insanely busy with school.

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

All around the world

All around the world I'm going, actually not so much. Right now I'm still in New Brunswick, where I've been for the greater part of the last 3 and 1/2 years, and any real true moving is going to have to wait for graduation. But as a little consolation I most likely will be spending the next 2 weeks in India and then the two weeks after than in Cali.

But perhaps more traveling like for the last while or so I've been traveling the web. The idea, or at least part of the idea is to get a good sense of what's up there and get more methods of spreading my reputation and general awesomeness. But this has all been a half-efforted effort largely since I've been busy with the whole schoolness and general busyness. There's still so much to look for and so much to find. But such is the way of the world.

I've put under my links some of the cooler stuff overall I've found, but I thought I'd elaborate a bit on the matter.

The Becker-Posner Webpost
Quite the impressive credentials on this one. Two noble prize-winning economists, writing about random political/social/economic issues from a certainly economist point of view. They are sort of conservative overall, but it's a conservativism born from the idea that many conservative positions lead to a better world. For example, both of them favor overall lower taxes, but high taxes for the ultra-mega-super rich. The question for them isn't necessarily fairness (although they sometimes factor that in), but whether it makes sense, mostly from a utilitarian point of view. Of course as two very different people they have different opinions of things and matters, for example on nationalism and such. But overall, they got a lot of interesting stuff to say from airline quality to giant pigs (no actually they don't talk about giant pigs, actually to stuff like climate change).

Dealing in Subterfuges: Jordan Baker
Alright main reason I checked out her webpost is the fact that she uses a character from The Great Gatsby as her name. As far as I can tell she's a professor and a woman and an overall cool person. She talks about baseball, life and womanness (not actually pretentiously), which makes it a bit interesting for me. I javascript:void(0)
Publish Postcan't say I know that much about women, and actually I can't really say that reading her stuff actually makes me know more about women, but her posts are always a fun read and she usually gets some nice talk-back too.

Rantings of a Sandmonkey
Now this guy is a Egyptian dissident, and while that might so highly serious and such and while he talks about some immensely serious matters sometimes. He also a pretty crazy cool guy who talks kind of like an idiot, kind of like a cool guy, kind of smart, kind of dumb, but overall worth giving a try.

Rocket Stocks
This crazy guy, this crazy guy, this crazy guy, well he's my bro. And his bud, but he writes a lot about getting free money and such all from a computer/rocket scientist/engineer point of view and does all sorts of crazy stuff, although right now all his writing is all about that old financial management which is good and all for money and such.

What's Alan Watching
The smart tv man, with tons and tons of stuff that's good to read. Never better an analysis of tv shows with an encyclopedia of knowledge and lots of cool stuff to read.

So all good stuff eh?

But there's so many odd and interesting edges in the world, ah and there's so much exploring left to do.

And my brain's still bleeding

There's work and there's work. And there's sometimes there's well, then sometimes there's just the Rand Show.

And yet my brain's still bleeding. Largely because this day has been (and given I still have a number of things to do, is continuing to be) another intense chapter of an intense week.

Low sleep + lot's of thinking (Number Theory isn't for the faint of brain, unless they're too stubborn to realize they're faint of brain) + lots of projects (I got all these nice little plans for my projects all laid out, and now they're going to horribly collapse once I start to implement them) + career thinking (careers, careers, careers, and braziers) + More Johnny means More Better = my brain, my brain, it bleeds!!!

But, despite things being intense, I'm finding surprisingly that work's getting done at a decent clip. The question is whether I can maintain it at this clip. And the answer to that would be no. I've already been missing far too much sleep, spending far too little time with my friends and family, and adding to a dangerous stress potential that could explode at any moment (by this I mean while I'm not stressed out right now, if I didn't reassure myself that the situation was doable I would be immensely, explosively stressed). That said, I should be able to get a leet beet of time to relax in about a week. That also said, I also am going to have to be studying hard for my finals (although compared to the amount of work I'm juggling now that should not be (but it could be) a problem). Those two things said, my mostly open finals period should give me some time to hang with my buds which should be immensely relaxing (hopefully), and with all of that said I must reveal the deep dark secret:

I'm going to India.

Actually only for two weeks, which is a relatively short trip. But then it's off to California for two weeks. And all you loyal readers will be going waaaah, waah, waah (you know you will be). And I'm just going to have to try to post when I can, or maybe, just maybe I might be able to get a fill-in poster, but my previous attempts to acquire such an individual have been unsuccessful.

It's strange being busy. For most of my life, doing one thing that was not school-related was a full day. Doing two things not school related, now that was a busy day. Laziness, fear of failure, yammering complaints, all them were keeping me down (and not down in the d-town). But here I am, actually busy. Weird.

I tend to surprise myself that I often rise to the occasion when needed. That's not to brag because the occasion is usually my own fault. But it is a little bit of comfort. And it is a hope, because there will surely be occasions in the future and almost certainly one of those occasions will kill me, after all we all need to go sometime.

But hopefully, even that occasion I can rise to, and hopefully I can lie on my death bed with my fear overwhelmed by hope, love and faith.

Saturday morning's alright for posting

Welcome to a special Saturday morning edition (I mean morning only loosely since it was around 11 AM when I started this and it is undoubtably after noon when this is actually going up (and you foreign folks have completely different time zones to boot)) of the Rand Show!

(I've always had mixed feelings about calling this the Rand Show in the post itself, I feel it takes away a bit of the personal feel of the webpost, but on the other hand it gives the whole thing an aura of coolness and a more professional feel, ah the constant war between professionalism and personalism, when will we all just learn to get along?)

For those of you in the know, the session's title is a reference to Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (in addition to linking you up to the lyrics via the title, I'm also hitting you up a video on youTube (why? Because I'm just too awesome (also it's a pretty cool song)). By the way, booh-ya to my little bro's awesomeness with his academics and SAT's. Not only is it good for him but it's one more person I can leech off of when I'm a crazy unemployed writer. Also shout out to my little sis and her mad nursing-student skills.

(That leads me to a little thought about the WGA (Writer's Guild of America, the union for Hollywood writers, excluding reality shows and animated shows, but including game shows and talk shows) strike that I've been trying to get in but haven't found a good place for it:

I'm of two minds when it comes to this strike, on the one hand, it seems like it's mainly for the benefit of employed writers or writers who regularly have jobs, who are actually doing immensely well (better than the national average or even median), while 1/2 of the current union members are unemployed (although the striker's points, like residuals do benefit unemployed workers who once had jobs, I'm unsure how much it'll help people who have had very few and minor jobs who are breaking into the business, who I think are a significant minority if not the majority of the guild), when you have a situation like that it seems like you need to lessen salary demands to allow for more employment, so in that sense I'm against the strike. But on the other hand, it makes some sense for the writer's contracts to be adjusted for new technologies like downloading, and I realize this might prompt a massive renegotiation with other guilds, like the actor's guild and the director's guild, these renegotiations again make sense with new tech. So those are my thoughts on the matter, do with them what you will).

If you've noticed that this session seems unfocused, well I'm okay with that. I know I've sometimes chastised myself for bad sessions before which have often been unfocused but usually the problem with those is they were unfocused on topics that were lame or explored lamely and/or they were supposed to be focused but ended up not being focused.

A tendency of mine with unfocused sessions is to concentrate solely on stuff I'm doing for my webpost. I'm trying not to do a sole focus on that, but I tend to follow the wandering of my thoughts when I'm unfocused and as I'm working on my webpost, my thoughts often turn to that. So I'll try not to be exclusively me/webpost focused here (I'm thinking it might kind of late to talk about this since I'm already several paragraphs in). But on the matter of the webpost, you're all bums for not adding comments, but it might just be that's because there are so few of you.

I've often sat weary wondering whether to continue this, but my mind has always been cheered up by the idea that I have many viewers, however after carefully examining my sitemeter account I'm more skeptical. I'm hesitant to actually blame Sitemeter since most likely I simply have been using it badly, but before when I looked at it I assumed that the visit count did not include me, however... well, that significantly chops my visit count down and it also means my visit length statistic (which I'm really not sure how it works since when I examine the details of it, almost everyone comes up as visiting for 0:00, when at least some of them I know should be higher) is inflated by my own staring at my greatness. Overall, I'm concluding that I'm not sure how Sitemeter works and need to take its statistics with a grain of salt, but overall it indicates that not that many people are visiting my blogspot account. On the brighter side I still seem to get a high view count from my MySpace account, but I was hoping that I could one day discontinue that, but it seems that's not the case. So, in conclusion, I really don't know how many people read my webpost, but it's most likely some but not that many (also, according to Sitemeter, which again I'm not sure if I'm reading it right, I apparently have readers in India, Argentina, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Estonia, again I'm not sure how many of those may have simply just visited for five seconds, but a shoutout to my foreign readers!)

Enough shop-talk, well, almost enough shop-talk. I'm hoping that once my finals are over, I can start pumping this site up via more links, getting more into the webpost community, getting into the youTube community, and good old-fashioned commercialism. For those of you that hate commercialism in any way shape or form, let me say first of all, I'm almost certainly not going to change what I'm writing to fit a commercial generating mold, by commercialism I mainly mean I'm going to try to get money from this webpost (and hopefully pump some of that money into improving my much-neglected website and this webpost itself). If I do make any changes for commercial reasons, the only thing I might do is narrow this webpost's focus to fit into a specialized niche, but that's a big MIGHT, and would almost be a probably not.

But let me hit up commercialism for a sec. I might do a full session on this later on, but I want to give a little defense of commercialism. First, let me refer you to Jimmy James' brilliant defense of advertising. Second, let me say that commercialism can be bad when it means that artists reduce the quality of their work to make cash or please their financiers. However, if extra cash allows artists to keep on producing great work, than that isn't a problem, heck, even if the commercialism dictates the general direction of the artists work that doesn't mean the stuff is bad. After all, it was commercial interests that drove the production of tv shows derived from toys and while I'll freely admit many of those shows were bad, and many were dumbed down (less for the sake of the toys than for the low expectations of tv producers about kids), we still got awesome shows like Transformers, GI Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (although this actually originated with self-produced rather indie comic books, but I think the funding for the TV show was largely based on toys sale expectations), and even Neon Genesis Evangelion! I could go on on this topic, but I'm not going to since this whole post is getting immense. So just let me say, if I do get commercial on you guys, don't expect any less awesomeness, because that's just not how I roll.

Anywho, like I said this session is getting massive, and since it is unfocused I can't really justify any more massiveness, thus I'm going to wrap things up and if you're really lucky (and if you're all good boys and girls) I might make another session later tonight, or maybe even do a rare Sunday session. So anyways, take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Vacation's all I ever wanted, actually no, but Thanksgiving Break!!! Wooo!!!

Greetings, y'all. Sorry about missing yesterday's session but you're all bums, so I don't feel so bad, especially since I for once was not being a bum and working hard for the monkey, so hard for it honey, I work hard for the monkey so give me some monkeys and give them some honey (wow, I started out with a song parody, went to a Simpsons reference and then went straight to insane nonsense (am I awesome or what?)). Actually I had a ton of school work to do and my mind almost exploded, just almost. But now that's done and it's time for BREAK!!!! THANKSGIVING WOOOOO!!!!

Actually I still have school work to do and some of it I actually need to do over the break. Thanksgiving break's actually something of a tease when you think about it, since it doesn't last that long (least for me, Rutgers only gives 2 days off (because they're bums), and unlike more lazy and yet generous colleges like Princeton University I don't get a fall break) but moreover fall break doesn't really signal the end of a school unit. I mean certainly a lot of tests and projects ram up to the end right before the break (hence the insane amount of work I had to do up to yesterday), but once the break's over BAM!!! got to prepare for the real finals (which for Rutgers is throughout the month of December (Princeton's got a really weird schedule where they have their break first then their finals, they also have extra time for their break, but I actually prefer to have finals first then break because break time would probably lead my brain knowledge to decay and the decay and such and so that would be bad for finals and such).

And yet for all the teasing, it will be nice to have a good nice breakity break weekend. Especially since it's THANKSGIVING WOOOOOO (seeing as I've got mad Catholic power (Catholics rule! Yeah!!) here's a link for Catholics about Thanksgiving)!!!!!

Plus my bro the bro-man Jay (again shout out to his webpost) is coming over so that'll be the cool and all (he might even give me some tips for upping my webpost quality (I mean it's already awesome, but it could be MEGA-SUPER-AWESOME). It'll be pretty dang cool eh?

So this break will be still pretty awesome. Now I do wish it was longer, especially since I tend to use my breaks to get actual personal work done (now to say what this work is, well, I've got projects, writing (I actually want to try to get into a habit of writing a page of fiction/poetry each day, although I'll probably not be posting it up since it'll be raw in form (and possibly content, but probably not, I'm not an exhibitionist)), renewing old friendships, etc., etc., plus tons of other stuff) (I tend to have mixed feelings about the idea of school as work, but I've talked about that before, and I'll talk about that later), but let's do a little supposing and say I didn't do work (it happens sometimes I end up having my depression or anxiety catch up to me on a break and it takes me right out of all the work stuff), then while I certainly would like more than 4 days break, too long of a break could be a problem.

My brother's like this sometimes, he can't stand being not at work for too long. I mean I can be not at work for long periods of time but then I just feel crappy and guilty and even if I can get over my guilt I still feel unsatisfied, because heck, I like my work (and here I'm talking I'm about my real work like writing).

But still, especially since I'm going to be doing personal work, I'm going to love this break, love this Thanksgiving, and love you my good readers (you know I love you!).

So anyways, take it to your head, take it to your heart (take my love people! (I mean that in a writer-reader way, although if any girls want to contact me...)), and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

It's been a long November

It has been a long month. And I've established that over my sessions throughout the month. As to the why of the why it has been a long month, I could probably put out a good session on that, but I'd rather mix things up a little with a little mixing and a little upping and a little mixity upity up.

So I like gum. It's good stuff really. It preserves the experience of eating for a long time, and that's really nice.

I also like eating, it's also good stuff. I like to think it's a somewhat artistic experience. I mean the crafting of good food is artistic, but appreciating the food I think is also artistic. When you appreciate art you are forced to take an artistic outlook and such. So it's all good stuff.

So with that in mind, let's throw on some awesome artistic appreciation stuff like a couple of shows I'm watching now:

1. How I Met Your Mother

Really nice show, it's a sitcom but it goes beyond the sitcom conventions. The central conceit that it is a guy telling his kids how he met their mother gives the show a little bit of direction although sometimes it leads the show to go rather semi-lame lesson-oriented.

2. House

Nice, nice show really, most of the time. House is a jackass, but he's a miserable jackass. That's the thing about jackasses, if they're always right, the show's an endorsement of jackasstery, but if the jackass gets proven wrong every now and then then it's okay. And House manages to balance that. Plus you got some nice character interplay, and so nice joke cracking. And as a medical procedural show, well, I've heard they get some of the med stuff wrong every now and then, but the show keeps things suspenseful and they play around with the formula every now and then. But in the end it is a formula show though. And after a while, it gets kind of hard to stick with that. House is one of those shows that's great to watch every now and then and often awesome to watch when it's rising up or falling during a storyline arch, but once it hits the long stretch of the season, when the formula really shines out, the episodes become a little interchangable, and not something you want to over-do. So that's about that.

I've got another confession to make, I'm your fool

After two days I've still got Foo Fighter's the Best of You stuck in my head. But that's a damn nice line "I've got another confession to make, I'm your fool." I guess I am your guys fool. I've been looking at a lot of other webposts and a whole lot of them had their authors give up after a while (which kind of hurts my efforts to accumulate the best of the web's webposts, since I'd rather not include ones not regularly updated unless they are especially good.) so the fact that I've kept up almost daily sessions for nearly a year (when I hit the year mark I'll probably be in India, so I'm not sure how much of a celebration I'm going to be able to do for it) means either I've got a minor accomplishment or I'm your fool.

I wonder how large an accomplishment this is. I've definitely had at the best mixed success in attracting readers (because most readers are bums, and while you guys are, as I've said often, bums, you are apparently less bummy than the rest of the web, so my hat's off to you guys (if I've had a hat)), in terms of quality I think I've done well. Overall my average quality is good, although I've had some crappy sessions I'll admit, and I've had a couple really great sessions (sometime soon, once I'm done copying over all my old sessions from MySpace I'm planning to create a list of best sessions). But perhaps most importantly my consistency has been pretty good, not excellent maybe, I've missed sessions every now and then and sometimes for as much as a week, but I've kept at it, and that's more than can be said for a lot of my other projects, and maybe, that's something I can be proud of, maybe.

I often wonder what good I've done in this world. I try hard to remind myself of a rule I made that I'm not going to judge myself by my accomplishments but by my effort to do good, but if the impact of my 21 years... if the overall sum of it is a little good or maybe even a decent amount of bad... It's hard sometimes when I think that way. But lately it's been hard for me not to think that way. My brother complimented me on my ability to deal with my mental illness to make it through these years. I've always wondered how well though I've made of things, maybe I have kept my grades up, but that is as much do to the mercy of my professors as it is to my effort, but perhaps that's okay. Maybe we all need a little help now and then.

But I'm not sure my survival, or even my personal success at school is enough for me. I'm reminded of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Anyone who's seen that show is now asking, dude, does he actually understand it? Well, no not all of it, but parts of it. I understand to some degree the feelings of the main character, Shinji who struggles to find the desire to fight, to live, or to exist as an individual being. His low sense of worth negates the idea that he has an inherent right to exist, but I like to think he finds something in the beauty of the emotion of love that carries him through and gives him the worth he needs (this is the interpretation including the movie End of Evangelion). Is that enough for me? But have I valued and cherished love as I should, or have I just dwelled in fear? If I care about love so much why haven't I had a bigger positive impact on the world?

These questions whirl around in my head endlessly. And I worry that I've had a negative impact on someone I love (adding to previous fears of this), so I wonder is my slight positive impact overwhelmed by this? And if it is, then for the sake of my love of others, is it better for me to leave... But this ignores many factors and ideas. First of all, I think I underrate my positive impact on the world. My writings might not be widely read yet, and heck, they might not even be that good (although I still think they really are, after all, how can Rand the mighty and glorious write badly?), but I've tried to be a good friend to my friends, and I think I've done pretty well on that front for the most part. For most of my friends I think I've left a positive mark. I think for most of my family too I've left a good mark. Second, I think I ignore my positive potential, if my writings are good, if they get out there they should do some good, I have the potential to do good for my friends and family and strangers really. Thirdly, I have to consider the impact of my leaving this world, but even if that's a reason to stay that's not a reason to really live this life.

Perhaps, if I want to talk about the good impact of my life actually being happy and well, perhaps I ought to think of God. God loves me, and therefore it makes sense that He would be happy to see me well. And I like to think, even if I haven't made much of an impact, I really do believe in love, and whatever my personal failings that counts for something.

It doesn't stop the questions, just because you have answers. But maybe it allows you to overcome the questions, and still live, and more than that, when you have the answers, it allows you to strive for further answers.

I suppose in the end, I have no choice to keep on pressing on, well, no I have choices, but those choices are simply wrong, and so if I'm honest with myself, I realize I want to press on, and with God's help I'll keep doing that.

Even if the tides of the past keep pulling me backwards, maybe still I can break the current and sail beyond the seas.

Maybe.

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

Maybe it has the best of me

After every music session I do, I get a song stuck in my head. From my last music session I got Best of You stuck in my head. And I feel like maybe someone or something has the best of me, but I suppose I just need to rip away and say "I'll never give in...No, I refuse." I'm half inclined to do a semi-exposition of this song or even a full exposition, but for various reasons that would be a bad idea. Time's one, I do have a paper to write, but also the things I'm thinking about when I'm hearing that song right now aren't stuff I can share, at least not with everyone.

I realize it's a bit of a cheat to hint so heavily at some story I'm not going to share, but if it is a cheat, so be it, I can live with that, but I can't live with telling this story on the web, at least not today. There are some stories I tell and some I don't. Stories about me I tell for the most part, although I'm considering being a bit more guarded about these because people I know might (big might) read this and take things in a bad light (actually I already consider that and hide certain things, but I'm considering expanding that rule); stories about news, culture, science even, the world in general, those I tell; stories about things that never happen or only might happen, those I tell; but stories about other people, well, if it's positive I might share it, but I'm not going to share other people's secrets on the web, it's just not right.

If it seems even more obnoxious to explain myself in a way that hints even more at the story I'm not telling, well, that's really too bad for you. Sometimes you have to live with not knowing. It's just that something bad happened, and it's taken a lot out of me, but I'm pressing on, even if I can't really change the bad stuff that's happening, but at least I can live my life and hopefully help prevent other bad stuff.

But it hurts you know, watching bad stuff happening and being helpless. It does hurt, and sometimes it takes the best of you.

But when that happens you just need to scream "I'll never give in, NO I REFUSE!"

Because if you do give in...

And even with the bad stuff in the world, there's still so much good, it's still not a bad world, it's just not as good as you'd like it to be... and so you learn to live with the bad stuff that's happening, and you learn to press on, and you take back the best of you.

Or at least you try damn hard.

That's really all I have to say about that.

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

You can't stop the music, even if you wanted to

And still the beat goes on. I've been putting off doing a music session for a while for a while because of a bunch of reasons really, I guess I was frustrated with YouTube and the often shallow selection of AMV's there (I mean come on people do you really have put every single song to Fullmetal Alchemist, and Naruto, come on people why Naruto? (I think I actually understand why Naruto appeals to people, it combines a fairly straight forward fighting anime with simple comedy and drama elements, nothing especially fancy, nothing especially well integrated, and not up to great standards, but I can see how people could like it, especially if this was the first anime they saw (or simply the first they saw after Pokemon and Yugi-Oh))). I was also just generally avoiding doing a real session because, well, things fall apart.

And things aren't well, now, but still we must press on, even if we'd rather stop.

Anyways, even though I touched on this before I thought I'd start things off with:

1. A Perfect Situation by Weezer - From the album Make Believe - I'm not going to go too deeply into it since like I said I touched on this song before in this previous session. But it is damn good song, so chuck filled with emotion that at the end all you can say is Ooooooh, Ooooh, Oh, Ooooh, except it time and melody with the song, alright fine, Ooooh doesn't work well when written out.

Lyrics

Weezer's video - An awesome video, funny, cool and still it reaches into your heart and gives it a little squeeze

A Perfect Situation AMV - anime - Midori Days - Despite the anime being about a guy with a girl on his hand (no, this is not porn), the anime's filled with that wishfillness for romance just like the song, and this AMV really brings out that emotion, sometimes its a bit too literal it its imagery but it connects the video with the song and comes out better for it so well, well done video maker, well done.

2. Sunday, Bloody Sunday by U2 - From the album The Joshua Tree - This is an immensely stirring song. It is about the Bloody Sunday Massacre, you can check a small primer on the matter on Wikipedia. It was part of the greater Northern Ireland conflict, but ulitimately the song boils down to a roar against violence. And this was before Bono became so goody-two-shoes that it just makes you want to smack him upside the head.

Lyrics

U2's video - a standard concert video, which I suppose in its simplicity underlines the seriousness of the emotion, but I prefer a later fan made video made with clips from a movie depicting the events of Bloody Sunday, U2 video stuff, and some photos from the day itself.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday AMV - anime - Neon Genesis Evangelion - A damn good AMV, I must say. It certainly connects in terms of energy and mood with the song and much of that connection is due to the choice of elements by the AMV-maker. Still it strikes me as interesting choice thematically since Neon Genesis Evangelion is all about Senji's struggle to find a reason to fight and Sunday, Bloody Sunday is well about not fighting. But the great anguish of war, that's the connecting element the AMV picks out well.

3.London Calling by the Clash - From the London Calling - The desperate, insanity. The utter energetic pessimism. The nihilisticly joyous anger. Ahhh, that's the stuff. That's the ROCK!!!!

Lyrics

The Clash's Video - Now like the U2 video for Sunday, Bloody Sunday this is largely just the guys playing their music (although not at a concert), but the setting, the lights and shadows, the angles and the cutting all create a better video. Just a little tip for you aspiring video directors. (Note this is actually an altered version with some video edits and remastered sound, if you want this is the original video)

London Calling AMV - anime - Rurouni Kenshin - Now I don't like to repeat myself with animes I have unsure opinions on (I used to watch this a couple times but I didn't really get into it then, maybe I'll watch it some time in the future), but I really wanted to have a London Calling AMV and this one captured the chaos of emotions that swirl around in this song, and it does it with swords!!!

4. Best of You by the Foo Fighters (keep on fighting that Foo guys!) - From the album In Your Honor (it's in my honor, not in you guys', I'm the special one here) - I always felt this song was about the struggle to maintain hope and passion against tragedy. Least that's my ways of it, but this much I know, and I know this for trues, this song is awesome.

Lyrics

The Foo Fighter's video - insane video, but if this song isn't about insanity, it's about something mighty close to it.

Best of You AMV - anime - various - This AMV belongs to the cutting edge of the genre, where people use really nice video editing software to punch up their videos with fades and live action implants and the like (as well as obnoxious opening bits), but none of that would be enough without the meat and cheese of AMV craftsmanship (by the way my little sister has gone vegan which means she has given up both meats and cheeses), scene selection, tonal matches, energy correlation, etc. And this succeeds, it contains a sense of strength, of yearning, of deep struggle, of passionate emotions, and of mental anguish. Maybe not exactly what I got from the song but plenty close enough to the song to enhance it and let it shine.

5.Eye of the Tiger by Survivor - From the Rocky III Soundtrack - Dude, anyone who listens to this song before a performance or competitive event and does not get pumped up has no soul, or doesn't the song (but then they're just lame).

Lyrics

Survivor's video - alright this isn't actually Survivor's video, but it's close enough since the song was designed for Rocky III (besides you can't tell me what to do! You're not my real mom (unless mom is reading this)!)

Eye of the Tiger AMV - anime - Naruto - After griping about Naruto before, why feature a AMV with Naruto? Because I can! Also I'm willing to give that Naruto is a decent fighting anime (although I'm not crazy about all that jitsu stuff, I mean I know it gives a systematic sense to made up martial arts, but after a while it just sounds lame), and it is occasionally able to throw its characters into some nice combat scenes that can be nicely sliced up, smacked together and turbo-charged with the awesomeness of this song to explode into greatness (although I will smack this AMV a little for incorporating a lot of scenes from a Naruto plotline actually featuring a special eye (you can tell this if you read the subtitles that are left in (little tip for AMV makers, unless you plan on incorporating the subtitles, just use a dubbed version))).

So that's it for the music biz. And that's the biz with music and siz. It's nice to really invest some effort into a session like this. Even if these music sessions aren't as intense as the normal sessions (and that's a real if, since I'm always surprised by how long music sessions actually take to put together), it gives a little sense of accomplishment, even if my readership is small enough that I could beat them up with one hand tied behind my back and the other connected to an electric beating machine.

Little side notes: Congrats to old Piro and his wife Sera on their baby Jack!

Also my sympathy to Ryan Sohmer for his recent loss of his cat, baby (the comic on that is here and he has a blog entry on it here).

Odd how that ended up. I've never met these guys, but I've always admired them (to a degree), and they inspired me in part to get onto this interweb, so well, well that's that.

As to my own stuff, well, it's my own, and I have other feelings and shout outs I'd like to give, but I don't care to be coy or irreverent and so I no longer care to continue this session (although I should be back for another one tommorow, why? Because I'm just that awesome).

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

To the Veterans

I had a lot of trouble earlier this year trying to do a Memorial Day session, and so, well, I had a lot of trouble writing this for Veteran's Day. But I have a great deal of respect for veterans. Risking your life to protect your country is truly noble. I'm not sure exactly what to say more than that really.

Y'all stop your fussing and feuding

Greetings y'all! I'm using y'all I lot. I never did it before I took Ms. Lewis' Latin classes, but there she used y'all as a way to demonstrate the 2nd person plural which English normally just lumps into you with the 2nd person singular. And maybe I've hung around too many Southern people, although I don't think I know that many, but anyways, greeting y'all. I'm planning to start saying just random thoughts in between long sessions. I've tried this before and got discouraged as I felt that the random thoughts were replacing the real sessions, which might happen occasionally due to busyness, but I think if I make sure to do real sessions as much as I can IN ADDITION to random thoughts, the whole quality of the webpost will up itself to the MAX.

Anyways, something I think sometimes is just a wondering about the massive amounts of money spent on political advocacy groups. It seems like such a waste, especially since it often gets lost among the million other advocacy group's pouring money. And it seems like sometimes that the money could actually be used to address the problem instead of lobbying about it. Schools are bad, well instead of spending money lobbying about it, spend money improving things. But that's just frustration I suppose. Successful lobbying can often get more money than it costs and if your lobbying doesn't match your ideological opponent's lobbying you might find the government actively opposing your cause. But the current level of lobbying, and I'm not just talking about corporate lobbying, although that's too large as well, is a bit heavy by the way I see it. It would be nice if we spent less time trying to get the government to solve problems and more time trying to solve them ourselves. But the world is busy, brutal, and filled with competing visions that clash terribly. So even if we try our all, who knows whether we will succeed? Only God.

So with doom and all

So it's been a couple days since I've done a session. In real terms, it's not terribly important that I haven't been doing so. I find it a bit distressing though, and so it is therefore a terrible tragedy because I am Rand the Mighty and Glorious, etc., etc., etc.

My brain's been a bit off lately. That being an understatement but I'm going to let it slide. As my buddy Howard pointed out that I use this as a diary somewhat. Well to that:
Yes
No
Maybe
So
Does anyone ever say that anymore? I try to avoid just bitchin' and whinin' and other things that involve excessive chopping of g's, but I do talk about feelings and crap. Hopefully the idea is to talk about the matters in a way that explores ideas and shows insight etc. Because when dealing with feelings you think thoughts and when thinking thoughts you occasionally hit on an interesting one, so I thought throw it up here and so there you go.

Blah, blah, blah.

Anywho, I like to write sometimes about how screwed up my brain to a large degree out of curiousity. It's strange but I find myself fascinated by the oddities of my disease even as it tries to destroy me. It's like admiring the teeth of a tiger as it prepares to bite your head off. Etc.

My mind is very off today. So hopefully I'll revisit this matter later tonight, but for now I'm wrapping things up. If this is unsatisfying to you, well, that's life, or you could check out the healthy sized archives I'm developing, with all my other sessions etc.

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