deja view

Huh...so...I guess I like DEJA ENTENDU (2003, Razor & Tie) by Brand New.  Weird, b/c I could have sworn I hated that CD...I used to think it reeked of mediocrity at best...I guess A. I wasn't familiarized enough with the "emo" genre to realize that anything too outside of the realm of primal/punk-type rock would just be too "weird" for most people and B. my expectations for music in general circa 2005 were way off the charts.  I'm listening to it now via Grooveshark and I swear most of these songs were played on my local alt rock station, although truth be told they were most likely in heavy rotation on my LastFM station(s) so it just sorta seems like that.  I mean, it's just amazing, this CD is like the soundtrack for an emo-arthouse film circa 2003 (what is emo-arthouse you ask?  Heck if I know...).
  I listened to Armor For Sleep's DREAM TO MAKE BELIEVE - and enjoyed it - for the first time in...3 years?  4?  It's sure been awhile.  I used to think it was my FAVORITE CD, and I asked my sister to buy it for me on iTunes b/c my computer at the time was a total piece of garbage...$10 was spent on that and not too long afterward I threw the CD-R away.  WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH ME!!!!???
  I bought Genesis - Live/The Way We Walk Volume Two: The Longs for the 15th time (apprx?).  It was only a buck and six cents and I had $0.75 in Hastings credit, and enough cash to cover the rest...
  It's kinda scary to think I'll be living all these/those years, with buildings and electricity, and shopping...and then one day NONE of it will matter.  The kind of music I like, what I've decided to eat, my dreams...all of it will be dust.  Almost as scary, if not more so, is the idea that civilization is an ocean away from collapse.  So many nations are populated by folks living in fear, many of them are on the run for their lives.  Genocide occurs contantly in Africa, human rights violations of every kind imaginable & worse occur just about every day in Iran and China...and China practically owns us.  Iran most likely has the ability to destroy us, while the reverse is not true.  And even if it were true, we wouldn't dare blow them up b/c they would go down knowing they got an even trade.
  I keep making lists of CDs I want to own.  I'm not sure why; I can get just about everything I want and more for free.  And the gov't apparantly thinks I shouldn't have anything more than food clothing & shelter...oh, and medical care as needed.  I'm surprised they pay for my cholesterol medicine.  They could stop paying for my Abilify AND the cholesterol medicine, since my physician seems fairly certain that the Abilify is causing my spike in cholesterol, although the food I eat probably doesn't help either...I mean, they don't pay for diabetes assistance or dental care, which I agree is a waste of gov't funds.  I mean, I have poor dental health and although it's difficult, I would not expect Medicaid to pay for my $300 dental bill.  If I had taken the advice of everyone around me and brushed my dang teeth, I wouldn't be in this situation.  So, why do they pay for the latest anti-psychotics?  I mean, I guess they can't exclude much of anything since anti-psychotics wear off and for some patients the medicine doesn't work to begin with, so they need to keep trying different things.  Idk...the MSRP of Cymbalta is $600 - YIKES!  I'm not even sure why I'm taking it, I should probably ask my psychiatrist...
  It's frightening to keep reminding myself of how pointless everything is.  At worst, I could save my money until I can afford a TV of some kind (19" minimum unless my gramma wants her TV back eventually...not sure what her long term expectations are on that front...hers is apprx 15", which is almost big enough, but still a bit too small, IMO.).  And yeah, TVs are a pain to replace, they cost more than their worth, or it seems like they do to me b/c I get so little to spend every month, but at least they've gone down in price quite a bit over the last 15 years...and they function a lot better than they used to.  A 15" TV of today actually is more useful than a 15" TV of 20 years ago b/c you don't have reflection and you don't lose 1/8th of the screen when watching an anamorphic widescreen movie (although not all anamorphic widescreen movies fill the entire screen, regardless of what TV you have; I don't know why but different movies have different aspect ratios and the black bars only disappear if the film was made with a certain aspect ratio, there may be more than one aspect ratio this can be said about, I really don't know...I'm not even sure what an aspect ratio is...).
  Heck, even my Blu ray player was $25 more than it should have been.  And in my opinion it should have never been needed.  All Lions Gate had to do to make everyone happy was ask the MPAA to give THE LAST UNICORN a PG rating instead of a G rating and then the prunefaced WalMart shoppers would have no business complaining about a few "dams" and a barely noticeable few seconds of private part exposure here and there...but no.  Instead they use this controversey surrounding the censorship of that movie to force THE LAST UNICORN fans into buying a blu ray player.  And I'm well aware that this is Hollywood's world and I'm just living in it, so I did the sensible thing and just bought one.  Thankfully it has analog connectability, so my gramma's 14" TV (NOT widescreen, NOR Hi-def) can work with it.  I noticed one brand selling a blu ray player fairly cheap at WalMart.com about a year ago, maybe 7 or 8 months ago, and it did NOT have analog connectiosn and I just knew that wasn't smart.  Maybe I had an actual reason for thinking that, but I don't think it had anything to do with me borrowing someone's spare TV.  I didn't even know my gramma had a TV lying around...but anyway, I'm sure glad the one I did pick has analog.  That was actually a key factor in buying that particular one, since I bought that and a stereo receiver, since I have little to no use for a home theater receiver and home theater receivers cost more money than stereo receivers, and I was trying to get all I "needed" for as little money as possible.  And I don't have room in my music listening area for 5.1 speakers.  I MIGHT have room for a 3.1 CH system, and the features you get with a HT rec'r are almost drool-inducing to read about, but for hi-fidelity audio in a HT format you'd need to spend probably AT LEAST $300.  Budget HT rec'ers are OK, or so I've heard, but a cheap Sony stereo receiver and a equivelantly priced home theater rec'er from home audio legends Onkyo, powering SSB1000 bookshelf speakers by Sony, sounds pretty much the same to my ears.  The Onkyo rec'rs MSRP was about $100 more than the Sony and I paid about $200 total for that thing, whereas the Sony was about $130.  I'm not even sure I could have gotten a decent HT rec'r with my dental appt - $80 - and knowing that I would NEED to buy speakers that cost AT LEAST $100...eh...I could have done it, I know dang well I could have...that's under $500 with the BD player, but I just wasn't thinking.  I bought a boat load of CDs and I don't even have most of them, if any, anymore.  Oh well...here's hoping next year brings better...