look out pres. clinton!

i finished the first part of my music project.  it’s called partly cloudy and you can download it if you want to.  it’s only 14 minutes long.

download it!

i’ve made two mixtapes recently.  left-click them to listen, or right-click them to download.

mixtape #3: side A

1. jonathan richman – nineteen in naples
2. talking heads – the good thing
3. sonic youth – french tickler
4. wire – marooned
5. brian eno – golden hours
6. unicorns – child star
7. danielson – did i step on your trumpet
8. dr. dog – oh no
9. deerhoof – milk man
10. of montreal – jennifer louise
11. pavement – at and t
12. syd barrett – octopus
13. animal collective – did you see the words
14. os mutantes – panis et circenses
15. olivia tremor control – mystery
16. t-rex – cosmic dancer
17. neil young – vampire blues

mixtape #3: side B

1. velvet underground – sunday morning
2. beatles – happiness
3. david bowie – always crashing
4. demon attack – sunsets
5. big star – daisy glaze
6. quasi – ghost dreaming
7. imperial teen – birthday girl
8. beat happening – hangman
9. battles – race in
10. the field – a paw in my face
11. caribou – yeti
12. kinks – people take pictures of each other
13. electric light orchestra – confusion
14. beach boys – surf’s up
15. sparklehorse – saturday
16. blonde redhead – hated because of great qualities
17. circulatory system – days to come
18. destroyer – smith
19. daniel johnston – nothing left

mixtape #4: side A

1. jorge ben – o filosofo
2. brian eno – backwater
3. david bowie – heroes
4. wire – used to
5. sonic youth – winner’s blues
6. big star – you get what you deserve
7. make-up – the choice
8. gza – liquid swords *23:17—26:22*
9. dr. octagon – aliens *26:22—29:14*
10. aesop rock – none shall pass *29:14—32:49*
11. battles – tij
12. animal collective – peacebone
13. deerhoof – spiral golden town
14. kraftwerk – europe endless
15. demon attack – steve keyboard
16. gui boratto – scene 1

mixtape #4: side B

1. panda bear – bros
2. olivia tremor control – california demise, pt. 3
3. talking heads – heaven
4. neil young – walk on
5. djengo reinhardt – dream of you
6. duke ellington – big nick
7. electric light orchestra – livin’ thing
8. beach boys – don’t worry baby
9. leonard cohen – a bunch of lonesome heroes
10. rolling stones – no expectations
11. velvet underground – sweet jane
12. modern lovers – new england
13. danielson – cast it at the setting sail
14. kinks – david watts
15. beachwood sparks – this is what it feels like
16. caribou – sandy
17. love – she comes in colors

i was riding my bike home.  i had a fruit something at the roasting company.  and i thought X was 100.  but it’s only 10.  this kid was riding a little faster than me on 8th east in between 2nd and 3rd south.  he must’ve sensed that i was having a terrible time with roman numerals.  so he said, “hey brother, what’s going on?”  and i said, “just riding my bike.”  and he said, “cruising around town.  that’s what i’m doing.  actually i don’t know what i’m doing.”  and then he started riding a little faster.  but we both stopped at the stop sign.  and he said, “is that light up there 100 south?”  and i said, “yep, where you headed?”  and he said, “100 south and 700 east.”  and i said, “just take a left at the light.”  and he said, “i live 2 blocks away but get really confused.”  and i said, “yeah, it can get pretty confusing.”  and he said, “where are you going?”  and i said, “right here.”  and he said, “take it easy.”  and i said, “keep it real.”

then i tried to tell natali that i didn’t believe in free will.  but she was more interested in showing me a picture of a sculpture of jesus that makes her cry.  i was probably meaner than i should’ve been.  like usual.  but i had just lost my new best friend.  we had formed such a close relationship in riding those 1 1/4 blocks.  and now he’s gone.  we probably wouldn’t have been friends in real life.  mostly because i’m mean to all the people that are nice to me.  like stefano.  and brian.  and everyone else.  i pretend like i don’t get moody.  but sometimes i get really irritable and then i use a rude tone when brian is trying to tell me something that’s way more interesting than anything i read or thought all day.  and then i don’t even apologize.

i watched the rafael nadal tennis match.  he’s cool.  he makes me want to wear sleeveless shirts all the time.  actually, gavin does.  gavin’s the one who made me start thinking it’s a great idea.  so thanks gavin.  i cut the sleeves off of like 6 shirts.  but it probably doesn’t even matter.  because summer is over.  if it snows on monday, i’m liable to be very upset with the weather patterns.  i’m liable to blame it on the jet stream.

also, thursday night soccer is probably the best thing that ever happened to me.

typer shark.  it’s a typing game, but way more exciting than most typing games.  so you’re a deep-sea diver.  and you’re searching for treasure.  and you have an old-fashioned diving suit.  with an oxygen tube that extends up to your boat.  and you’re sinking to the bottom of the ocean to search wreckage for gems.  but there are sharks that are trying to eat you.  and piranhas.  the sharks have words (and sometimes non-words) on them.  the piranhas have single letters (and sometimes non-letters) on them.  you can electrocute sharks by typing the words or murder the piranhas by typing the letters.  it’s tough, because i don’t advocate killing either sharks or piranhas.  but when you’re in a situation where they’re going to devour you, you’re forced to do some things that you’d rather not do.  like murder sea creatures.  anyways, if you can survive and get to the bottom, sometimes you find great gems.  like the mount etna emerald.

so i started on 50 wpm.  and here are my stats:
score: 5093450
level: 20
time: 53:03
wpm: 75
accuracy: 97%
rank: master of typer shark

i’m not usually that good of a typer.  but when i a shark is coming right at you, your adrenaline does things for your typing that you can’t really imagine.

i had a dream a month ago that i had a pet cobra. it was a boy cobra. and he wasn’t just a cobra, he was king cobra. and he wasn’t just my pet, he was my best friend. like dogs are supposed to be. but king cobras can murder dogs. they usually aren’t interested in murdering dogs though, since their diet consists primarily of snakes. maybe even cobras. but not other king cobras. they’re not even in the same genus, so it’s not cannibalism. plus it’s smart for snakes to eat snakes since they’re the same shape. anyways, so i had this best friend king cobra in my dream. and there was an emergency of some sort. and i had to go somewhere fast. so i borrow this brown truck (i don’t know anyone who owns one in real life, which is how i knew it was a dream — and anytime cobras are involved, it’s always a dream), and my cobra and i take off. the king cobra is well-behaved in vehicles (even trucks), and starts out on the seat. i’m driving on the freeway pretty fast and the king cobra gets bored of freeway scenery and starts slithering around under the seat. i thought this was a very natural thing for him to do, since it wasn’t my truck. so he’s checking it out down there and i’m driving fast. then this other truck (two trucks in one dream? i should’ve known it was actually a nightmare) cuts in front of me. i swerve to miss it and slide off the road and i do a 180 on the dirt and come to a stop. my first reaction is to check to see if my best friend cobra is okay. so i reach under the seat to pull him out (and it’s obvious to me that this is how i normally interact with him) and he bites me in the hand. this reaction by my best friend is completely understandable, since the truck had slid all around and probably startled the snake. plus he’s a king cobra. and he naturally bites creatures that it deems threatening. so in my dream, i don’t even hold the king cobra accountable for biting me. it just seems like an unfortunate series of events. (is that the title of a book?) i have cobra nightmares at least 8 times a year. no kidding. they’re almost always the same. i think the king cobra and i have an understanding and i get bit and wake up.

so i’ve been staring at the screen for like 14 minutes. and the letters now seem gigantic. it’s like i’m watching a movie where someone else is typing. actually, it’s exactly like when i have the flu. when i get the flu, my dreams usually consist of these gigantic but delicate objects smashing really really tiny spheres. every time i have a dream like that it think it’s totally weird. but that’s what it’s like right now. the letters are huge. and they seem like they could break apart. or get crushed by something even bigger. like the twin towers.

how did anything hit the pentagon on 9-11? isn’t it the most protected airspace in the world? aren’t there automatic anti-aircraft missiles? wasn’t the entire pentagon and u.s. military on alert since there had been two planes flown into buildings and at least two more hijacked at the time? and isn’t there an air force base within 10 minutes driving of the pentagon.

the letters are back to normal size.

two christmas’s ago i read a lot about the claim that paul mccartney died and was replaced by a look-a-like. i read for about 5 hours on 4 straight days. i wanted to believe it. i really did. i usually want to believe these far-fetched conspiracies. but i can’t. because they’re usually completely implausible. how would they find a paul look-a-like that plays bass left-handed and sings the same? how would they keep linda and john and george and ringo quiet? how would they keep the look-a-like’s family and friends quiet? i read this page called “undeniable forensic dissertation.” it has pictures of the real and fake pauls and compares them. pretty convincing. except for how impossible i think it would be. but i spent some time trying to convince brian, even though i didn’t believe it. i just did some more reading a second ago. this guy gary patterson was on coast to coast AM to talk about this stuff. i guess he’s written a book. in his article, he quotes someone, “The resolution of the pictures is not comparison quality- different angles are not a scientific way to examine photographs especially to back up an argument. Different angles are there to give an overall view only but not for comparison. It has to theoretically be an exact of the one you are comparing it against. Changes in muscle movements in various photographs cannot be seen with the naked eye but can change measurements if you are comparing only photographs. That is why unless you can see beneath the skin to the actual muscle-then you cannot say precisely what a facial measurement is especially using two photographs that are that dissimilar in expression for comparison.”

also, he links to a couple of interesting websites that deal with this idea of comparing images of paul pre-1967 and post-1967. “paul mccartney is not dead” and “sir james paul mccartney“.

anyways, my point is that i like to read about this stuff. but i’m very skeptical. i try to convince people, but i really just like talking about this stuff. then i started reading about 9-11. and this is different. at the beginning i watched a bunch of videos and stuff about how live television was doctored and stuff. very fascinating, but not super believable. but then i started really reading about it. and there’s a lot of stuff i do believe now. like that the planes weren’t intercepted out of incompetence but out of negligence. or that the pentagon might not have been hit by flight 77. right now i’m reading this book called “the new pearl harbor” by david ray griffin. i thought it would be way annoying. but it’s surprisingly pretty good. i think he jumps to conclusions too often, but the evidence is laid out very nicely. it doesn’t convince me of his claim that the white house was involved in planning the attacks, but it has convinced me thoroughly that almost the entire official 9-11 story is fabricated. and also i’m convinced that members of the defense department knew what was happening and allowed it to happen. but mostly, i’m convinced that a serious investigation needs to be made. a website that i’ve been looking at a lot is 911research.wtc7.net. it suffers from jumping to conclusions from time to time, but i think it’s been pretty fair in most of my reading.  but i have a new favorite website: 911review.com.

so for the first time in my interest in these sorts of “conspiracy theories”, i’ve actually started buying into one. but i’m reluctant to, because of the association people make between conspiracy theorists and crackpots. i don’t believe the crazy stories. but in some ways, i think the crazy stories are more plausible than the official story. so i tell people about this stuff i’m reading all the time. and they probably think i’m just joking. like with the paul mccartney stuff. when i tried to convince brian and greg and krista, i didn’t really believe it at all. so when i talk about this 9-11 stuff, i sometimes laugh it off so i don’t seem like i’m obsessed or something. but i guess if i stay up until 4:00a reading about it, i might be obsessed anyways.

i just go through phases, right? 2 years ago i read about cobras all the time. last year paul mccartney. this year 9-11. i don’t understand it really. but i do know that this is the worst, most boring blog i’ve ever written in my life. i don’t dare go back to read what i wrote. it’s 3:52a and i’ve been reading stuff and writing a few things for an hour and a half. and i don’t think i’ve tried to make any jokes. i actually started this blog because i re-read the one about wimbledon and hated it. i hated that it was the top blog. and i wanted to write something. so i wrote about cobras. and 9-11. it’s too hard to come up with jokes in the middle of the night.