NO JACKET REQUIRED (1985)

Listening to "Sussudio" by Phil Collins, kickstart track from his Grammy winning album NO JACKET REQUIRED (1985, Atlantic).  Not exactly a powerhouse of emotion or anything remotely similar, actually wears very thin after the first minute or two.  On minute 2 second 39, and counting and I've been feeling sickly empty for the past minute(?).  Stupid song.  Great sound effects, lots of flashy synthy drumNbass.  I rarely find the kind of empty mindedness necessary to appreciate this dumb song.  The album picks up from there, slowly, from track 2 ("Only You Know And I Know"), but none of the tracks really pierce the heart or mind unless you can wrap your mind around the simple joy of "Sussudio".  The last three songs on the album are probably my favorites, but, like the opening track, are more style than substance.  Guess it's a matter of preference.  A lot of people might hear a track like "Inside Out" and "We Said Hello Goodbye" and think of them as filler.  The filling track in between those two cookies, track 10, was a radio hogger ("Take Me Home"), so I doubt most have any problem with it.  Maybe some of the younger generation might....folks who were raised on Limp Bizkit and/or Lady Gaga...I've read several comments on Amazon customer submitted reviews from parents noting their kids found fault with the production quality of a lot of '80's music.  When my high school chum from 1999 and I were reflecting on 80's music, he noted the technology was obviously lacking in a lot of it.  I only really notice it when on Pandora, shuffling through various songs from various decades.  You hear 1985 Phil Collins, then 2000(Y2K) Vertical Horizon and then 2010 One Republic and so on it kinda becomes obvious the amount of tape hiss or whatever present in those 80's songs.
Anyway, I've gotten distracted from the CD typing this.  I've heard this CD about half a million times, so it's not like I'm missing out on anything.  I don't even know why I tried listening to this.  I always do this!!!!

HISTORY: PAST PRESENT & FUTURE BOOK I (2CD)

I turned 12 on Nov.20th 1995.  So I was 11 when Michael Jackson's not-a-comeback album (after such high hopes...) HISTORY: PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE BOOK I was released and I didn't begin listening to it until my absentee father bought it for me late in the year or sometime in 1996.  I was attending school at a remote area that agreed to facilitate a place of education for seriously emotionally disturbed (S.E.D.) youth.  So I spent my days around crazy people, basically.  And my mother was also crazy, and my sister was also slowly losing her mind, thankfully it never went off the deep end, she's kind of the glue that holds my family together to this day.  But anyway; I knew of MJs alleged child abuse, so the explosively emotional content in Disc 2 made sense to me.  Oddly enough, a couple of years before this album came out, I was involved in a conspiracy to steal pornography.  The store owner was "kind" enough not to prosecute me.  Is he a child abuser for putting magazines containing pornography in a section of the store where kids can not only reach them, but reach inside and see what's in them???  I'd love to see him try and press charges. :/)  Anyway, I still sometimes listen to it, on sites like Rhapsody/Spotify.  Putting "Billie Jean" at the beginning was a smart move.  I never cared a whole lot for "Wanna Be Startin' Something", so i rarely listen to THRILLER.  I might put up with "WBTS" the same way I put up with "She's Out Of My Life" during playback of this album if it weren't at the very beginning.  On the downside, you miss all but 4 songs from the magnificent BAD, which, btw, is NOT out of print(winkwink).  Everyone seems to favor THRILLER and some favor OFF THE WALL, though the only song from OFF THE WALL I like is "Rock With You", thankfully included here.  OTW was a transitional album though if my 31 year old white male self is perceiving the pre-me past accurately.  I mean, he was a solo artist b4 OFF THE WALL, but, to me anyway, his solo stuff gets confused with his Jackson 5 material.  OFF THE WALL was the beginning of the end of that.  Disc 2 starts off with "Scream", the hit duet with his sister Janet and picks up from there with the smoldering intensity of "They Don't Care About Us", which has since been censored b/c of MJ's use of a certain antisemetic word [deleted]...I'm not sure the use of that word can be aptly apologized for to the people who are offended by it, being as the Jewish people have suffered the largest mass offense to humanity ever carried out and I don't blame them for being a wee bit touchy about it.  I'm sure MJ felt the same way I did when I first heard about it, something along the lines of "Me, racist?  But I'm not a racist!"  I mean, the holocaust was unthinkable.  I, at least, cannot wrap my head around how such a movement took place.  I don't get how similar yet scaled down (mostly) behavior toward kidnapped Africans became accepted in North America.  It's not logical, despite certain people's half brained attempts to justify it.  Anyway, as far as the other 13 tracks, most of them are good to great.  "Tabloid Junkie" is basically just MJ saying "please quit reading the tabloids".  I don't like tabloids, they're tasteless, almost comical, and not anymore entertaining than real news or, better yet, a novel or a movie.  [Names and places have been changed so that Michael Jackson doesn't sue us for talking trash about him even though me may be aware that it's him we're talking about...oh did we strike a nerve, Michael?  THE OFFICAL RESPONSE FROM MICHAEL JACKSON'S ATTORNEY: "Since the writer claims to have written a work of fiction and this story does not mirror the actions or mind of Michael Jackson, there is nothing for Michael or his family to say in regards to rumors circulating about it"]

"something from my childhood...something that could never possibly destroy us"

The Right Lefts released a punk-comedy record titled BAD CHOICES MADE EASY.  If that wasn't noteworthy in itself, how 'bout that Cap'n Crunch ripoff?  OOOH!

Unsung Burn

My uncle Eddie, I found this afternoon, has decided to wash his hands of Best Buy.  I don't communicate with him often, but I asked my Gramma what to get him for Christmas and if he still shops at Best Buy, and she said he'd been stung a couple times so he's done w/ 'em or something like that...
I told Gramma of all the horror stories on the web regarding Best Buy.  She seemed unfased by all of it and I take it she didn't bother to tell Eddie about it.  I think I might have tried to tell Eddie about the whole web of sludge surrounding their name outside of their shiny conglomerated namesake, but I don't think it helped him.  Best Buy will continue to rake in money with no regard for its customers - loyal or otherwise - unless/until the ppl take a stand and quit shopping there.  People seem to think they are trustworthy because of the fact that every city has one and everyone knows their name.  People often forget that a recognizable name and face has no value.  People vote for their elected officials in the same manner often times; ignorant of voting records, just voting for whoever is the most charming or handsome.

RRg.

"Are you eating it or is it eating you?"

"There's a piece of me in that machine; and a piece of it in me" - that crazy guy from Tobe Hooper's The Mangler.

I've read how many authors of the 40s-60s were deadset against technology.  Words like "dehumanizing" and such often were used to describe it.  I think some of that was just a bittersweet nostalgia - bitter about the present and sweet on the past.  But I wonder sometimes if they were truly onto something.  The Buggles THE AGE OF PLASTIC, according to an Amazon customer review, contained a song about how technology stifles creativity.  I don't really know if that's true, since even preppy schoolboy rockers Genesis were largely appreciated by people who chose to use illegal drugs.  It's hard to say if rock as we knew it from 1965-1979 would have even happened had the young folk not succumbed to every bad habit their parents tried to protect them from.  So, yeah, Taking Back Sunday and Nickelback aren't re-inventing the wheel.  Nobody except people who are stuck in a relatively small area of music history are demanding they even try to re-invent the wheel.  People don't want spacey headtrips being played on the radio.  Stuff like that causes one to ignore everything around them, which is counterproductive if one is trying to shop and is downright hazerdous when one is driving.  Emotional powerpunches like "Livin' On A Prayer" by Bon Jovi or "Someday" by Nickelback are about as creative as music needs to be for most people.  You can shop to the beat of the song once you've heard it a couple times and are familiar with its rhythm and enough of the lyrics to sing along with (part of/most of) the chorus...and driving, that just depends on how sucky of a driver you are.  I don't have a driver's license bc I'd have to have the radio OFF to keep from ramming into somebody and even then I might get lost in my thoughts and do that anyway.
And I concur with my Grandma Della and her dearly departed sister my Great Aunt Marie that the days of yore were no walk in the park.  Labor was indeed more difficult.  But, as they say, you reap what you sew.  What benefits does one reap just sitting at a chair all day under fake light?  Working the fields you easily see the benefits of your labor, even if it indeed becomes nearly impossible to continue as one gets in their typical old age.  That's where the idea of retirement came from, I'd imagine.  Sitting at a desk all day, what's the point of retirement?  Does one get too old to sit on their ass and push buttons?  Of course, everyone has family or at the very least (as would be in my case, if I had a job to retire from at any point...) hobbies to enjoy a larger qty of.  But the truth is if you have kids or a wife, they need you now AND later.  If they can survive you out of the picture 8-12 hrs daily these days, they can probably get along just fine later.  Kids grow up and the less they see of their parent(s), the more they don't care.  Making up for lost time doesn't happen with children; despite whatever stigma they've earned in your eyes, they're not children by the time you retire.  Unless you pave your own way to retirement and get out of the workforce by the age of 35 or something...and if you had your kids when you were early-mid 20s, they're already drifting away from you by the time you're 35-40.  Kids at the age of 14 are just starting to "get real" in respect to life and what it's "all about".  They're developing and discovering aptitude and trying to figure out their role in the world.  It's a confusing time for them and you bugging them demanding to make up for time you didn't spend with them when they were a baby and/or toddler is a distraction they don't need.  I was 17 when my Mom converted to Christianity and it took over 10 years for me to get over the sudden change in rhetoric I was hearing in her.  The ideas of individuality and personal freedom of expression and supposedly sharp observations of hypocrisy being the Christian way, etc. etc., was suddenly replaced by Bible quotes, talk of forgiveness and how freedom of personal expression had limits and suddenly those limits were not the point in which logic fell short but rather the point in which it became sinful.  And then the household in which just about nobody ever visited became almost a zoo of people.  Visitors were stopping by left and right it seemed.  I was very uncomfortable with all the change that was going on and one of the worst things about it all was that it wasn't bad change and it actually made perfect sense.  However, I couldn't stand the idea that I was being led into it.  I always thought of myself as being rather bright, albeit staggeringly uneducated because of how behind I got in school by not sitting down and listening like a good little boy.  My sister was doing long division in 4th grade.  I didn't know what division was until at least 5th grade and the formula for triple digit division I could not wrap my head around well enough to execute until 8th grade and in 9th grade I had to re-learn it because I had forgotten over the summer break.  Even in high school despite my ability to remember a great deal of what the teacher had lectured without writing and/or going over any notes, I still got Cs and Ds on tests in history class because they insisted I needed to learn geography as if I needed to know how to navigate the Earth in order to understand the events and conditions that led to those events...seems like since aviation practice/skill is not high school, i.e.: general knowledge, material, but they thought it would be very important to have the globe memorized just in case aviation became an interest to 4 or 5 of the 400 students at my high school, they could sneak that into Earth Science.  Because I admit it's a valid theory that what happens in different parts of the world at various points in time is effected by the climate.  But one needs to understand how the climate effects the people within it, and that I did not learn in any of the three science classes I took once I got out of baby school aka Seriously Emotionally Disturbed (SED) class(es), which I had to ride on a bus for over an hour to get to because the school was located in the boonies and the students that went to it lived wherever they damn well felt like, which is all good and well since the citizens of the town that held the school were all farmers and the landlords didn't want crazy kids' parents living there just for convenience..."this isn't the WalMart drive thru serving Burger King anywayUwantit, ya know.  This is a land of hard working people and this community takes pride in what we do!  Your petty problems are just that - PETTY!  Go away and quit bugging me and my colleagues!"  Uh...got way off topic trying to explain why I'd seem like an idiot even though I' m really not, I promise... yeah...  Anyway,
But yeah, I would chew on the ideas that my mom would present to me and ultimately I would convince myself that it's "just" a book and it could very well be fiction for all anyone really knows.  The more information I was given, the more hard that was to really put stock in and eventually I was torn between pride and stupidity.  The hard part was answering anything my mom might ask if she found out I was no longer anti-Christian.  She might ask "Have you decided to quit pouting and join us?" or, "Are you a Christian now?"  Neither of those I would feel comfortable answering, especially a year ago before I really started reading The Bible.  Now I'm doing a Bible Study of this thing called THE STORY, which is a condensed version of The Bible that reads less like a textbook and more like a novel.  It's also supposedly easier to read, even though much of it is the NIV slightly re-worded.  I still don't know if I'm a Christian.  My pastor and my mother talk as if I need to go on a missions trip or volunteer at the Salvation Army.  My pastor said "He IS calling you to do something".  The part about something isn't so troublesome except for the "is" part, which implies every waking moment of every living day I'm being told by God to do something.  And since I spend most of my days and nights either asleep, watching TV, listening to music, or (window)shopping, it would seem to me like I'm not getting the message.  And if I were to get the message and act upon it, it would never be over.  I'd be spending my entire life on it.  So Mission trip or Salvation Army soldier is the only two options I can think of.  I'm too thickskinned as some might say to even consider trying my hand at pastor..  Even the Baptist and Church of Christ churches can probably do better than me.  If God ever forces my mouth open and pushes words out of it, I might change my mind.  And then there's my constant struggle with lust, which I often give into, in my awkward nobody wants me/DIY sort of way...ugh...hopefully Google doesn't censor this...darrg...
But anyway.  Just kinda thought it was interesting, the thought that by typing this and shopping on Amazon like I was 1/4(?) of the day that just ended 1 hr 17 mins ago (and counting....) that I am being "eaten", so to speak, by the actions I am choosing.  Like the sands of the hourglass...

The Unsinkable ship - of fellow(s)!!!

Realistically speaking, I don't think I'll be stimulated much by the upcoming dose of Church that is scheduled for 10:30am today.

But between all this free time I still have left (almost 1 hr and 20 mins as I write this and counting - down...) and all this good music and great remembrances of art and money that I will soon have to buy it and the music I have already stored on my Amazon cloud music thingy - that I am presently listening to - I am only pumped up to brush up for this brighter future that God promises His people.

HEre I come Church! 

Well, if you're counting that as evidence...

Ok, so whatshisface dino digger finds dino bones resting beside human bones.  Carbon dating confirms they are from the same time period.  Of course, mainstream scientists sweep this under the rug because it doesn't fit their anti-God agenda.

Scientists insist that evolution is true b/c there's all kinds of bones found all over of animals that resemble but are not identical to animals alive & well in today's ecosystem.  People say that this is evidence of natural selection but not evolution.

Ok, here's the problem.  Dino digger's "anti-science" discovery makes no sense unless you adjust common scientific theory to allow for the possibility that most human bones from the dinosaur days are nothing more than dust by now and that the dinosaur bones have survived as long as they have because there was more bone that has since disintegrated.  Otherwise, where's all the other human bones that carbon date with dino days?  Going under that logic, natural selection doesn't explain these bones that look like space zebras et al.  If you consider "all life was created at the same time", then you have the puzzle: 1)  what killed these animals?  They couldn't have lasted very long if they weren't fit for survival to begin with.  Some other animal either killed them off all too easily or they were a weakly designed species that couldn't take the heat.  Which brings 2)  If the average human bones are dead and gone (disintegrated), then why are these relatively small creatures' bones being found?  The Bible says the earth was created in 7 days.  If you want a "pro-science" alignment of this fact, watch THE GENESIS CODE.  It's a movie, not sure if anyone famous was in it.  One of the characters, a scientist, in the movie explains rather convincingly and articulately that from God's viewpoint, the events described in the first verses of The Bible probably took what seemed like 7 days to him because, for all intensive purposes, he was in "outer space", and time is measured differently from Earth than it is in space -- any details beyond that, you'll have to watch the movie or look it up and find an excerpt, 'cause I only vaugely understood what the dude was saying and I don't remember all the details because, like I said, I only vagugely understood all of it........but as I was saying, if the events in the first few passages of The Bible are to be taken with that interpretation, it makes perfect sense to think that the complicated process of evolution had time to hammer out.  As the Pope of now said, paraphrasing, The Big Bang Theory doesn't disprove the existence of God, but, to the contrary, requires it.  I'd say the same thing about the idea of evolution.  People say that the odds of the big bang being a reality are zero to none.  And in Ben Stein's documentary that i don't remember the name of he was making fun of this one scientist for saying something like it's possible that the process of evolution began from the backs of crystals.  I'm probably way off in my memory of what the guy said, he was answering rhetorical questions from Ben Stein -- I say rhetorical b/c Ben Stein made it clear in the narration of the documentary that he thinks the idea of evolution is absurd and no answer from anybody would be sound enough to satisfy Mr. Stein.  Obviously the majority if not all the pro-evolution scientists Mr. Stein spoke to refuse to acknowledge the possibility of intelligent design.  To me, that's what's really mind boggling -- that so many people think the universe just happened and continues to roll on like an undying death.  As post-rock gurus Explosions In The Sky once declared: THE EARTH IS NOT A COLD DEAD PLACE!

clock & dagger

The clock is my enemy;
here it is, 4 o' clock sharp and my veins are on fire
life is good
but for how long?
Where the hand lands nobody knows
The ticking is winding down
Very very slowly
I feel tired
Just a tad
I'm having a good time
But I should be in bed
Fearing the future of daybreak when I need to wake up but can't
Because I'm not in bed now
Maybe I should have bought some tranquilizers
Can you get those without prescription?
I usually don't have this problem
I never want to sleep
But there's times when my brain is about to shut down and I go to bed
Something about sleep begs comfort
Tradition perhaps?
Can't fight it
I need my blanket, I need my bed!
I'm not tired though, so why bother?
I'm getting there, but it's almost daybreak
It'll be noon before I awaken again
And then I'll go back to bed even later!
Whatever will I do?
I have no life, no schedule
With the exception of Sunday morning and Sunday evening
Maybe this insanity will wind itself around to normal by then
I worry too much

They like me, they really like me!

They didn't specifically address the problem, but I got more than I hoped for and possibly more, since there's that chance the "team in charge" might take my complaint into consideration...

This is the response from my grievances detailed in my most recent (previous) post:

Anthony B. (Swagbucks Help Center) Nov 04 03:23 PM Hi Jonathan, Thanks for letting me know about this and I'm so sorry for this trouble. I've informed the team in charge and they are looking into it for us. I'll be adding 15 courtesy bucks to your account for this trouble. To help you continue to earn, please feel free to visit our Winning Tips page where we list our most popular ways to earn SBs: http://www.swagbucks.com/g/tips Thank you so much for understanding and for your continued support! Best, Anthony B. Swagbucks.com One of the best ways to earn Swag Bucks (and find what you seek) is to use Swagbucks Search! And now that Yahoo powers our search results – the results are even better than before! Be sure to install the Swagbucks extension today, http://www.swagbucks.com/g/l/7mujjk. For help defaulting to Swagbucks Search, please click here, http://www.swagbucks.com/g/l/unl3jq

Are you smarter than the average Swaggernaut?

Swagbucks.com.

I just sent an email to Swagbucks support b/c whoever designed their NOSO (no obligation special offers) page has pissed me off.  I was listening to Phil Collins' ...BUT SERIOUSLY (1989, Atlantic Records) on Rdio (which cost me $4.99), and while my ears were listening, my eyes were navigating the NOSO section of Swagbucks, and when I got to the end of it, they asked me to click on some stupid mini-screen to "reveal the code" that I was supposed to enter in order to receive the two (2) Swagbucks that completing the NOSO entitles me to.  So: after I click the mini-screen-thingy Flo from Progressive starts yacking and it's loud, so Phil Collins' voice is only half audible to me and the passion and intensity of "Hang In Long Enough" (track #1, thankfully; if I'd gotten "into" the CD, this whole thing would be like a demon demolishing the NYC skyscrapers and scraping them against the bodies of the Swagbucks CEO......bloodtheblood...bloooooooooooooooood....) is drowned out by the saints of commercialism.  And despite what Oasis and their goons have to say, Phil Collins does not stand for commercialism.  He stands for music.  It just so happens that the average person likes his music.  I seriously cannot comprehend people that think because an artist or band is popular that they're fake.  This one guy was saying it's "brainwashing".  No, actually it isn't.  If you aren't exposed to certain types of music frequently at a young age, you tend to gravitate away from them.  The opposite is equally true.  So if you're a natural-born socially-awkward anarchist and your parents are perfectly content folks who believe in law & order, then you probably won't care much for Nirvana's IN UTERO or Dinosaur Jr.'s BUG.  My mom was a "square".  She didn't listen to Led Zeppelin and all that noisy shi*.  She listened to CS&N's DAYLIGHT AGAIN (1982 Atlantic), MJ's THRILLER (1982 Epic), Paul Simon's GRACELAND (1986 Warner Bros.), Genesis' INVISIBLE TOUCH (1986 Atlantic), Chicago's GREATEST HITS 1982-1989 (1989 Reprise) etc......while my dad was still "The man of the house", we had VH1 available for viewing on the TV.  Via that I saw Tom Petty & The Heartbreaker's music video for "Don't Come Around Here No More", George Harrison's "I Got My Mind Set On You", The Escape Club's "Wild Wild West" and Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy".  I also remember seeing Weird Al's music video for his Michael Jackson "Bad" parody, "Fat".  I also remember my dad playing Weird Al's EVEN WORSE and seeing the album cover, thinking "that isn't Michael Jackson..."

So anyway.  Phil Collins stands for world peace, whereas Led Zeppelin and Nirvana have not done a damn thing for the cause.  There, I said it.
And Phil Collins' music deserves some respect.  Swagbucks did me and Phil Collins a deeply unnerving disservice by taking up Flo to my browser and blasting her yacking...if I didn't have headphones on, I don't think my neighbors would have been too pleased either.  Phil Collins' "Hang In Long Enough" may not be their cup of tea per se (although I really don't know for sure, I don't talk to them a lot), I'm sure they'd take Phil Collins over Flo.  The only reason people put up with her on TV is because she pays for the TV shows so they don't have to.  I mean, for TWO FREAKIN' swAGBUCKS!!????!  I realize there's people that make a life out of Swagbucks, people called Swaggernauts.  Sorry, Swagbucks is a way to earn extra money for me.  Not a lifelong gaming ground.  Two or three Swagbucks accrued is nothing when it takes 450 of them to earn a $5 gift card.  Tell me with a st8 face that Swagbucks isn't getting AT LEAST $5 on avg for every time someone watches Flo doing her thang.  Yeah, and I only get 2/450th of that.  Not a respectable commission for someone who had their afternoon ruined by obnoxiousness.  It's one thing to try and listen to a CD that is obnoxious with no knowledge of what's on the CD before listening, but it's a totally different thing when peace & quiet w/ a dash of Phil Collins is going on and, without any reasonable warning, you get some obnoxious noise coming through the headphones.

Ok, well anyway.

Here's the email I sent to them.  I really doubt they'll respond in any intelligible manner.  They might get stupid and close my account.......
"Is multi-tasking prohibited while using your site?  No  Well, then quit f***ing up my internet radio experience by blasting stupid advertising noise at random spots!!!  I clicked "play video to reveal code" like I often do and this is one of the few times I've had to deal with audio w/ the video.  I'm sick of you and all these companies that are too thickheaded to catch on the concept that people on the internet typically have lives outside of the WWW...and even those who don't surely don't have an undying passion to hear Progressive Insurance ads intertwined with professional musicians performing music.  Heck, I probably would have missed the punchline if I'd been listening to a stand up comedian.  Seriously, it's a good thing I had just started listening to the song I was on, otherwise I would have gotten all caught up in it and the puncturing of the experience would have been that much more upsetting.  I mean, for 2 freakin' Swagbucks!  How pathetic do you think your average user is, to be going around the Swagbucks-phere, picking up every crumb they can find, unable to listen to music or do anything else that requires their ears just so they can earn every little particle of Swag so that some day they can get a $5 or $10 gift card -- redeemable for what?  More Swagbucks?  Sorry, if I have to be a fool to be on your site, then just tell me and I'll go quietly."

broke, not broken...

I have $28 to spend on groceries and wayward desires for the rest of November, which just started two days ago (gasp!).  $20 of that is guaranteed to go to RX and groceries I haven't yet bought but know I will need.  So $8 for Amazon.  And I haven't given any of my $720/mo to God.  I suppose that isn't automatic disqualification from Heaven if I died this month.......(......), since I'm "stealing" that money any way by not "turning my dis-ability into an ability"...which I suppose is something I could, in theory, do, but...I don't want to(?)...which is more or less the story of my disability, although scientifically it's much more complicated than that, as is everything else when you get to the bone of it...
I skipped church today.  I felt like an idiot half an hour after my ride left.  I ran out of things to do, but I did sleep from about 11am to 2pm, so I guess it wasn't a total waste.  I should have slept at night, but for some reason I only got three hours of sleep during the dark hours of the day aka the night...

Not sure when I'll get my next big stretch of sleep.  I have small group tomorrow at 7pm as opposed to having just got home from it a couple hours ago b/c of schedule conflicts with the pastor who leads the group typically.  I don't remember when I last slept.  It's been off again on again since 11/2 @ 3 or 4 AM.  I thought I was going to bed an hour ago.  This computer screen makes me sleepy.  Arg.  Maybe if I hadn't had my Pandora station based on All Time Low playing Cartel's closing track for their debut lp CHROMA I would have slept...but it's not as if any one can say now is it?  Well, God could, but I don't know of anyone who can actually hear God's voice, even though he does speak to people in alternative methods...however, I don't think such trivialities as "what would have happened had I done it differently" is something God is going to waste his talents on communicating.  Heck, I don't even know why I waste my emotional storage on such stupidity.  I don't know!

Anyway.  Small group is late in the day, tomorrow, so I'll probably get enough sleep by then to at least stay awake during my ride's arrival and the session itself, which usually takes about 2 hours or so.  I might also sleep sometime after I return.  I sure hope so...

Listening to Brand X's MASQUES.  Not very impressed with it.  I guess I can scratch that off my budget, heh.  I added it to my wish list @ Amazon, b/c I sorta liked the first song and part of track #2.  Maybe I'd feel differently about it if I was paying undivided attention to it.  I don't know how people can afford to listen to music like I do.  People on Amazon forums talk about music like it's some entity you're supposed to honor and respect.  They talk about giving it 3 or 4 listens before forming an opinion.  I don't understand how that makes any sense.  The music is the same regardless of how many times you hear it.  If you don't like it, then you don't like it.  Just because it's not something you're familiar with doesn't mean you're going to miss something by not listening to it multiple times.  In fact, it shouldn't be something you're familiar with, ideally.  If you're into music that's original as opposed to pop music, then you should be enough used to new things to not get pre-conceived ideas about an album before listening to it.  Although with bands that have been around awhile, it's hard not to do, I suppose.
Dang it.  Now i'm tired again.  And I only have $8 that isn't set on anything.  I'm counting on wanting to walk to Kidd's and get a convenience store-style capoccino(sp??).  That's $1.15.  If I do it twice it's $2.30, leaving me with $5.70.  Aaagh!
I hate the way a lot of the good ol' movies are being packaged nowadays.  Many of them come in ridiculously flimsy plastic cases, not much better than the all-dreaded snapcases that Warner Bros. used to insist on packaging their DVDs with.  I still have GREMLINS in snapcase, the one I talked about a week(?) ago....I returned HOME ALONE tho b/c the case was weather worn...did I already mention that in one of my more recent posts?  idk...anyway; I'm already running out of room on my space where i put my DVDs so I set GREMLINS and END OF DAYS in my closet.  I'll watch them when I damn well please, OK?!!
I have a ton of VHS tapes.  I don't really know why.  Some of them I went out of my way to buy b/c the cover-art was so iconic I felt like displaying them.  Some of them I bought at Teen Challenge thrift store for lack of anything else to buy and willingness to support their drug abuse recovery program.  I probably should give them back to T.C.  But I keep wondering "does anybody want them anyway?"  I guess they do b/c any smart business - non profit or otherwise - would have enough sense to get rid of something that just sits still taking up space for a year.  You can burn 'em if all else fails.  Or throw them in the trash and let the city dump figure out what to do with it.  Maybe there's a recycling program for audio and video tapes and photographs etc....?  Probably not one that's easy to access from this moderately small town.