[See post to listen to audio]

I’m not satisfied with the recording yet, but I have the feeling I will never be completely satisfied with a recording. This has several flaws, but it is my best to date that I actually have proof of!

Problems: timing, especially in the solo bits. I slide off key a bit at a few points with the vocal, but not painfully so. I really need to get a decent mic and a screen so I can eliminate all those plosives.

I took a bit of liberty at the end, slowing down, and ad-libbing a tiny bit.

[See post to listen to audio]

My 2009 is off to a good start. That’s not saying a whole lot, because 2007 and 2008 were both kind of appalling at points. I’m not saying that to complain, it’s just as it was.

So instead of making myself some promises that I won’t keep, I’m going to talk a little bit about some changes I’ve made in my life over the past year. These were not promises. These were decisions I made to make myself more happy. In part, you could call them realizations.

I am more honest with myself

Humans are liars. There is no escaping this fact. Our first inclination is to believe what we want to believe, or what we fear to be true. For a lot of people it stops there. For healthier people, there is a period of examination, a search for understanding, and often an internal fight with themselves when they can’t get to a conclusion that fits in with their already held views. There are others that are very good at being honest, but even those often fall into tricks they play on themselves.

I am very introspective. I always have been. Somewhere through my journey in the last year I realized a few things about myself that I either have often denied, or fought against for… well I don’t know for why. I try to be a strong responsible person, and I am. I think the crux of this epiphany was realizing what I hold back and what I hide does not in fact make me any weaker.

I am a hopeless romantic.
I am sensitive.
I love to show off.
I do care what other people think… just not very much.

That’s just a few to whet your whistle. I am nowadays embracing these things in me that have always been true, and I am a stronger and more complete person for doing it.

I am holding back less

If you know me well, you know I can be rather blunt. I put more weight on reality than on tact. Even so, I am generally polite (if challenging) and I am careful.

While staying responsible, I am going with my gut more often. I guess you could say I am trusting myself more. When I have an idea that sounds a little crazy, I’m not dismissing it, I’m exploring it. More often than not I’m finding good ideas. Sometimes they complicate everything, but that doesn’t mean they are not good.

I am keeping in better touch

I’m pretty terrible staying in touch with people. I don’t know what to blame for this one, as I love to talk. I’m making it a point to do better at this.

This one I’m still struggling with. I have friends scattered across the globe now, and the internet makes it possible to keep in touch with them, but it doesn’t give any of us more time. I may struggle with this for a while. I’ve been trying to send at least one email a week to someone I’ve not talked to in a while. It’s working, but I have a long way to go.

Done, and doing

Like I said, I started on these paths in 2008. I’ve already made inroads and I’m a better person. What are you doing? What have you done?

I took a few photos and put them up on flickr.

Using Flickr’s handy little annotation tool, I’ve labeled the garage. Now if I forget where I keep something, or it gets untidy again I can check back on flickr and see how I had things arranged and put away.

I also finally took some pictures of Dagny that do her a bit of justice.

George Lucas is a terrible director. I realize I’m not a director, and there are many complicating factors that cause the job to be difficult, full of compromise, etc. The thing is I have a lot of trouble imagining a case where you grab an intelligent (and completely inexperienced) person off of the street, tell them to direct a film, and not get something better than a George Lucas film. I’m not being fair am I? I don’t think Lucas is worthless, I just think he has no idea how to take an interesting story and flush it out with compelling characters. What he does is take compelling caricatures and… leave them as that. It can work for some films. Superhero style films. Films that don’t give you a second to stop and think. Films more along the lines of carnival rides than literature or art.

Ok, I feel better. I think I can focus on the positive now. Lucas is a very good story crafter. If Lucas writes an outline for a movie, I bet most any of us that read the outline will think: Hey yeah, this could really be something! He’s a great idea man. It doesn’t matter that most of the ideas are derivative, they’re still engaging. Which leads me to THX 1138.

It is derivative, yes. It’s an almost-standard dystopia. As soon as you start you’re thinking of brave new world, 1984, etc. But that’s ok, because it is still creative. There’s a lot of slants that haven’t been done. Then ambiance and photography direction are excellent. The mood is set. The confusion and pain of the main character are well expressed through the confusion and pain the viewer is subjected to trying to figure out what is going on in the first fifteen minutes.

And I’ve run out of nice things to say again. If I was watching it with some friends I probably would have finished the film. As it was, I felt a re-run of family guy I’ve seen at least 5 times would be a better use of my time. Owch, I just can’t stop myself.

Ok, it wasn’t horrendous. Probably the most engaging part of the experience is watching and listening to things that would make their way into Star Wars eventually. The police had some long plastic looking batons that made lightsabre noises. A lot of the background chatter can be heard on the death star. There were some droid noises. Disturbingly the most evocative spot in the film was the sound of a citizen being beaten near the beginning. No, I don’t enjoy listening to people being beaten, but that specific sequence was sampled and used in Nine Inch Nails’ March of the Pigs, and I’d never known where it had come from.

THX 1138 would be a good film to study if you’re into cinema. I can’t call it a bad film despite all my scathing criticisms. If you’re a Star Wars fan and enjoy delving deeper into how things were made and evolved, it wouldn’t be bad to watch. I’m sure someone’s crafted a good drinking game out of it as well. As entertainment… I’d give it a pass. If you want to watch a drug-addled dystopian future I suggest Equilibrium. It’s much lighter and less artistic, but it’s also got character development, dialogue, pacing, and likable characters. Better yet, go read A Brave New World, or 1984.

My apologies to George Lucas. I have enjoyed many things you’ve been involved in. You should focus on teaming up with other people that have dissimilar strong points.

This is a bit repetitive as it’s sung over, that will come soon enough.

[See post to listen to audio]

[See post to listen to audio]

I found:

A package of baby bella mushrooms
some cloves of garlic
1/4 cup chopped red onion
16 oz chick peas

I threw the red onion in a dry pan, turned up the heat.
roughly chopped the garlic, added to pan
drained chick peas, added to the mix
added roughly chopped mushrooms and a little olive oil

mixed up some vegetable stock from bouillon

I let that simmer a bit, added some kosher salt, pepper
It was a bit thin so I added a bit of flour to thicken

grabbed some parsley from my herb garden chopped, added last.

It’s quite yummy.

Feel free to use these for whatever you will. I haven’t cropped them for common desktop resolutions this time, I will leave that to you.

These are full 8 megapixel jpg’s with some light processing done. Thumbnails and links after the jump.

West Texas Pano by
Alex Morse is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License