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Good day, kind sirs.

I'm an engineer. The university can't be assed to write back to me whether they like me enough to accept me. I'm supposed to register for further study at my current university, but of course I had to be thrown for a loop and have no idea what to do. So I'll probably just ignore it one more afternoon and pick the lazy way out tomorrow.

Figured Turnip could use a little sprucing up, so I wrote a spanking new outro to Snake, redid the finale of Pulling A Tiger Through The Fifth Dimension, and tweaked Goatcreep by slowing it down a notch and sprinkling in some ukulele and the reinstated 2007 tap figure. There's gonna be an epic ukulele-Nebulophone duel in there too, that's gonna be fun stuff. I should get a band together and record it before it becomes a Chinese Democracy-style overproduced hunk of garbage.

Guess I could record it at the same pad that Kabanos utilizes to track stuff, with the same producer. He's used to music that's a bit outside the box with Kabanos's absurd lyrics and whatnot. I wonder if he can take my harmonies with a straight face though.

Life just trickles on, I guess. I go on clocking in the science stuff by day, when needed, and shyly fantasize about music afterwards. My current shopping list is a Musket Fuzz, a decent tuner of some sort and possibly a better overdrive (Lovepedal comes to mind). I'm not going on a spending spree, as maybe the money will be well spent on more productive stuff in the future. Time will tell. I did snap and buy the phaser... but the only thing cheaper than that on my to-get list is the tuner.

Greetings from Poland,
Rumpy

Hijacked Crumpet

I just logged into my email account, and got a spam email (a viagra ad, if you have to know) with a message name of "Crumpet", and sender "Hijacked". So, now I have to name something Hijacked Crumpet. The title of the blog post will do for now.

The university matters got nuked from orbit, I'm alive and able to tell the tale. Feels kinda funky knowing that it was my last exam session as an engineer student.

It's all nice and snowy outside, I'm starting to feel a little Crimbo inside. About damned time, considering Christmas Eve is just around the corner.

Snapped and downloaded a death metal demo today. Hey, some death is good death, as long as I limit myself to the creme de la creme all's fine. And Youtube's here to help me tell the gems from the tripe. This was closer to the former, so it got the HD space it deserves.

Practicing guitar, getting back on my feet a bit. Opted to aim higher, I'm working on some slightly technical crud I haven't been able to play thus far. If I get it down, it will be a pretty obvious step forward and I'll be able to stop worrying about regressing. Especially as constant practicing against a backing track/metronome has already done miracles to my noodling timing. Playing alertly at least an hour a day really does work.

So yeah, everything is headed in a pretty passable direction overall. Yay.

Pinkie Pie

Today was Spontaneous Christmas Shopping Day. We bought way too much random crap, and had to rearrange the freezer to tuck in the ginormous duck (?!), but all in all - mission accomplished. Sorted out gifts, and picked up a little ditty for myself. Pinkie Pie the miniature blindbag version is standing next to my laptop.

I used to be annoyed by Pinkie Pie's constant doofus antics, they got old quite quickly and she was an annoying wart more often than not... but then I got to that part of the series that explains why she got that way, and what happens when stuff starts going wrong in her head, and I understood. It's hilarious how easily I "got" her, considering how different our character traits are. But yeah, new favorite pony. So I let Hasbro have the bit of cash they decided to charge for the figurine, and I have my very own piece of My Little Pony memorabilia. The pinkest, most superficially stereotypical piece of girly show memorabilia imaginable. Heh heh heh.

My university work is chugging along fine. I should be studying Ergonomy for a test on Monday right now, but hey, why not deprive myself of another half hour of sleep and type up a long-neglected blog post while hoping the slides magically scroll in the background? Ayup, that seems logical. My project has a pretty firm first draft, and all the computations and stuff are done. Just gotta nuke two tests this coming week and I'm pretty much done with all the petty stuff.

Recently, it hit me like a truck that my guitar playing is a bit off. Whilst I may have slightly progressed technically since my "glory year" of 2007, as I tend to wiggle my fingers a teeny bit more when I noodle, the lack of playing against any sort of backing or metronome (and an overall erratic practice schedule) for quite some time now has roughed up my rhythmic kneecap a bit. I still have the phrasing ideas and stuff, but my hands slip up a little and it ends up sounding like a nooby mess at times. Thus, I've established a minimum of 1 hour of guitar practice a day, no matter how busy I may be, and I'm doing my best to derust myself. It shouldn't take too long. I hope. If the worst comes to worst, I'll just play written solos for a while instead of improvising...

So yeah. A blog post when I'm not in a nihilist mood for a change. Why bother focusing on how we're just an evolution misfire when I can harness the fact that I'm a pretty functional being and live a life? That doesn't make the world any less futile, it just makes me considerably less bent on the subject. Hope more non-depressed posts will follow, although I do have a history of posting more when low.

Look, Ma, I'm Slow-Motion

The last couple of days weren't really that awesome. The depressive, oppressive smog refuses to go away, but the world demands attention from me and I had to fight my way through all sorts of obnoxious bureaucratic obstacles on my way to creating an application for the serious UK university I fleetingly mentioned in one of my earlier posts. Now comes the fun part of collecting all sorts of hilarious certificates and other paper memorabilia they may desire, and I'm afraid to think of the visa process, assuming I get in. Very, very stressful stuff overall (I still have no idea if I did it right), so I'm mentally exhausted. Yesterday my dad took one long look at me and told me to take a choice selection of meds. Today, I got hit with a throbbing headache that gave way to a nearly narcotic-like dumbness stupor.

I can't do anything fast. Anything at all. It's pretty darn cold outside, my hands and face are freezing as I walk the dog, but I can't speed up to get home quicker. I can't make it to the phone before it stops ringing. The world feels like sludge that bogs me down and makes me unable to function. I crashed in bed and read a book. About twice or thrice as slow as usual as well. This is insane.

Was fun when I got sent to the shop to pick up some bread and ham for supper. Not only was I gone forever, I actually managed to lose track of my conversation with the shop lady a fair few times. I hope the state goes away, it's hard to function like that.

Melancholy

I somehow can't shake off a glum mood that's hovering around me like some sort of toxic fog, obstructing my ability to function normally. Apparently the world is flowing in the background, time ticking, deadlines nearing, and I'm somehow detached from it. It's not about me, even though it is about me. Every now and then I get my ass together for a while or two and get some stuff done, like a computer program or motivation letter for my studies application (how am I to sell myself as awesome and worthy if I'm the last person on Earth to think that of myself?).

It has dawned on me ages ago that the world doesn't have a purpose. There's no meaning of life, there's just a hard-coded instinct where the lone purpose is eating, sleeping and prolonging the existence of humanity. Whoever thinks otherwise is just shitting himself. What makes humanity more special than cats? The fact that intelligence went a step too far and imploded into self-indulgence? Give me a break. If you can't give me a break, at least be a good buddy and live by the rules your fantastic owner gave you.

Most folks enjoy laughing at other folks doped out of their mind. Instead, I'm prone to sinking into fits of inner rage, watching seemingly serious citizens acting like cats on nip, doing idiotic stuff far removed from conventions they have so lovingly embraced with their religion. I don't give half a fuck about how guilty you feel the next morning when the chemicals wear off, nobody made you get so wasted. Still, these folks are religious, and as such are pets to some creator dude up above and live by his rules (as sent to his pets via a messiah of sorts). As they are to live by said rules, they should not be acting like that. I spent a fair chunk of my early years trying to survive as an atheist in an insanely religious country, with a number of my fellow citizens making me feel inferior because Jesus Christ wasn't part of my life. If I'm some sort of Untermensch, at least be the Ubermenschen you make yourself out to be, would ya?

I try to live a good life. It's hard to stomach the fact that my attempts to be a proper member of the community don't mean jack because I don't believe in some hippy messiah and his loony sect from two millennia ago or any other variation on the theme, unlike religious folkses with all their fucktastic actions, doped or not.

I'm starting to understand why so many of my friends are true believers... as true believers, they actually abide by a firm codex of moral norms... not that unlike my own. That's not to say I'm indirectly a religious nut, as that's not the case. My definition of "good" and "bad" converges with their definitions more often than not. Sure, there's some overall world perception differences, such as God's existence or lack thereof, but I'm a pretty "good" person when viewed through their moral codex. Well, at least much closer to "good" than the vast majority of folks around me. Hilarious, but their purity somehow makes this be logical. In some weird, twisted way.

As such, I'd tag myself as a nihilist with rules. I was raised in a household with no religious presence whatsoever, but managed to come out with a pretty acceptable set of gut-based regulations. There's no need to mow down people with machetes, why make anybody's life harder than it already is? The futility of the human condition is enough of a burden. Why not try to hang in here together and make the most of our time here before our biological clocks run out, without getting in anybody's way?

Can't shake this thing off, no matter how hard I try. Been hovering in place for over a week. Listening to some choice R.E.M. nuggets (they had some pretty awesome songs, slightly deeper in their back catalog than Losing My Religion of Everybody Hurts). Waiting for this to go away. Trying to help it with some social interaction... in a curiosal plot twist, I smile a lot and am relaxed and happy. It's not about me, I'm detached from it. Weird-ass sensation, I tell ya.

I am Serious Man. This is Serious Wallet

As I'm off to Holland for a workshop, I figured I'd finally indulge properly in Dutch doom/death. So I did. I downed a whole bunch of bands I wasn't familiar with, listened to their albums, and put together a list of releases that I deemed interesting. While evaluating one of the records, I noticed it was very professional, but workmanlike in its nature, simply offering little actual relevant content. Sure, it all sounded adequate, but there was nothing there. The rhythms were simple, the melodies were predictable, it was pretty much derivative disposable drivel.

And that's when it hit me that about 99% of the entire death scene is, in fact, derivative disposable drivel. Sure, youthful energy, blaa blaa whatever, but the vast majority of this stuff borders on retarded musically. The melodic patterns are so trivial a preschooler with a keyboard could hand out notes for the next tremolo section or huge slamming riff. It's not musicians, it's just kids who learned to move their hands in a somewhat non-disdainful way. I don't really see a point to keep perusing this kind of stuff, just like I never went back to the first Ater demo that made me throw up in my mouth a bit.

Of course, there's the handful of magic acts, which are different and more listenable. But it's a handful.

As such, I am Serious Man now. All those death metal "researchers" were either in the original scene or are aged 25 tops. As Serious Man, I have obtained some assorted works of Arnold Schoenberg, blew the dust off my Bartok CD set, and said hello to the stray bits of jazz on my computer. I intend to go to a serious university in the UK, and I need to be adequately serious for it.

As a token of my metamorphosis, I have purchased a Serious Wallet. Up to now, I carried cash in my pockets and all forms of ID in some scruffy plastic etui. Now I have a wallet made from real leather, and it lets me carry money, cards, ID, whatever the heck I may desire. It even comes with this dubious photo slot that looks black without a photo and black with a photo inside. Urk, bad idea, designers, bad idea.

So yeah, I'm a more serious human being now. Obviously, I'm not throwing who I am out the window, merely fine-tuning the details and realizing that most death metal, which I meticulously collected for months and months, is in fact tripe.

A Walk

Today was a suprisingly nice day in the mountains. The sun shone in the middle of the surprisingly clear and blue sky, I didn't really need the coat that was crammed on me as I utilized the chance to get out of the house. Why waste all of my day in front of the computer when I can take a walk?

Mom sent sis along. Sis was completely against the idea, and I had to wait a full hour before she finally got her stuff together (with mom's aid) and we left for the north face of the mountain. Snigger all you want, I don't care - the ascent angle, coupled with the fact that the ground was nowhere to be seen from under the dense level of leaves as well as my shoes' lack of traction, made for an interesting experience. For sis, as she laughed herself silly at the sight of me struggling upwards, clasping onto whatever was at hand, including trees, roots and rocks. To make things funnier, the dog evaporated. Fortunately, I managed to convince sis that it's nigh impossible for the dog to spontaneously disintegrate into atoms, and we met up with our canine buddy at the top of the hill. The pooch was quite fortunate, we had to wade through bushes and whatnot whilst he could just dart through small holes in the foliage.

Reaching the top of the hill did not imply the halfway point of our journey, though - we conventionally take the long way down, past the wood processing facility outpost. Our favorite oversized log vanished, probably converted to a batch of textbooks or something similar, but there were still enough of them laying around for sis to burn a good half hour dashing up and down them. I never got how she could do that, I'd probably fall and die within two seconds. After a brief investigation of something perceived as the dog limping (what we were probably dealing with was uneven terrain), we continued our trek.

Some more silly distractions later (a random doggie behind a fence that sis decided to entertain with some sticks to fetch, and then her discovering a blister on her toe), we reached the epic bend... the road makes a pretty big U-shape, but cutting through a shortcut would be somewhat challenging due to the steep slopes and lively stream in between said slopes. Sis decided to go for it. I decided it's far too adventurous for me, and took the long U-way out of the problem. When reaching the appropriate slope, I saw sis... she appeared stuck somewhere and looking a little sheepish. I sighed a huge sigh of "told ya so" and took the road back to help rescue her (she appeared much closer to the original spot from which she took the detour). Upon arrival, I was greeted by her familiar pink sweater... on the other side of the road. Same strip of road, take three. Was fun, at least, and I still have no idea how she pulled it off.

Perusing Queen. Their early records are pretty darn solid prog stuff, where was this all my life? I feel a 70's bender coming up in my blood. About time, too. I'm slowly running out of 90's death subcultures to research.