Posted August 1, 2010 at 10:47 pm by Severed Head
It’s all bullshit, really. It’s like that ballboy song
“And all that’s left is to grow old, grow old and hate your younger self and fool yourself when you pretend 
that you know more than you did then”
I was reading over this article and it’s ridiculous how much everyone looks back on their lives and thinks they know so much more now! Here are some examples of the advice:
“Relax, enjoy and stop taking it all so seriously.”
“Save your money. Study Engineering. Go to Notre Dame rather than Yale. Stay away from New York.”
Basically, what it comes to down is that the uptight kids (like me!) regret taking things so seriously, and the kids who went out partying wish they had been more responsible/serious.
So what message can be gotten from all of this very contradictory advice from older folks?
Nothing really. Don’t be so caught up in business/serious matters that you can’t enjoy yourself, and don’t enjoy yourself so much that you can’t be successful in business/serious matters. You should know that already though.
The only message I got is that people, for the most part, think they know a lot more once they’re older. And I disagree. If you think you’re smart at 18, and you weren’t, why the fuck do you think you’re smart now? It’s too easy to just cop out and pretend that that person 18 years ago wasn’t you, but it was, and you probably haven’t really changed that much. You probably haven’t learned that much. Sure, you’ve had more experiences, but it’s just a different set of experiences. And it lacks the fresh memories you had when you were young. The lessons you were just starting to learn. It’s like the 40-year-old who no longer knows how to do algebra, when they could when they were 12. It’s a fucking cop-out to just assume that all young people are stupid or don’t know what they’re doing.
One commenter gave a list of advice about not procrastinating and whatnot and then, at the end, wrote this: “Advice for age 18 x 2 = 36. Ditto.”
It’s sad that most of the advice they give seems to reflect problems they have 18 years later. It’s easy to idealize the youth and say you have so much opportunity, but I’m 22 right now, and it really doesn’t seem like that. I’m definitely trying to see everything as a big opportunity, but at the same time, I’m constantly being pressured by adults to figure out what I’m doing with my life because whatever I choose to do will change the rest of my life. And while I completely agree with that, my entire life is going to be like that. When I’m 30, or 40, or however old, the large majority of my decisions are going to affect the rest of my life, I’m just probably going to want to make ones that keep me on the same path, just to maintain some sort of stability. And, of course, the remainder of my life will be a lot shorter, so the decisions won’t have as much impact.
Some of the other advice amounts to:
“MISTAKE: Realizing that I actually had a chance with the girl that got away.”
These are life lessons! The idea of this article is to give your 18-year-old self advice, not just somehow implant these ideas which take months to really solidify into your head! We’ve all been through bad experiences, and we have hopefully learned something about ourselves and the world in the months following, even if the only lesson was “Well, that won’t work again”–hell, even if we didn’t learn that lesson, that is life! The idea of this exercise isn’t to look back and regret mistakes made, goddammit.
Anyway, what this all leads to is my own advice to ANYONE, 18 or not:
Live your life. Don’t look back on your life as a series of wrong decisions, but as lessons you can learn and what you can do in the future. But even in the future, after having learned any lessons, you probably won’t really be that much smarter. Your memories of the past will probably have all been greatly exaggerated, which will affect you in ways you’ll never understand. Plus kids will all be listening to new, terrible music with stupid fashions. And, even with new technology, the large majority of the problems that exist today will probably still exist then. Nothing really ever changes that much, so don’t expect it to.
Harrison’s Highly Critical, Judgemental, Elitist Rants Presents: Strong Opinions
Life, Limb, Philosophy, Pissed off rants, Propaganda
Posted July 25, 2010 at 12:28 pm by Severed Head
Allow me to explain what I’m talking about before dismissing me as hypocritical: Strong opinions without a good foundation.
Here’s what I originally wrote on twitter: Everyone has such strong opinions on the economy, immigration and health care without knowing how any of these fucking systems work
I am so goddamn fucking sick of seeing my age post about the immigration bill and about Obama and the law and anything vaguely political. I know these people, and they are fucking dumb. The large majority of you out there don’t have a good understanding of how any of these systems work. I completely admit that I don’t understand how the economy works, or how healthcare works, or how immigration works, but I’m learning. How? Public Radio. A completely neutral news source which attempts to explain how the world works without presenting their opinion as the only option. If you get your information from Fox News, I have a difficult time respecting your opinion at all. They feed you your opinions and a completely one-sided view on how the world works. Everything becomes political, from the economy to health care, to alternate lifestyles (whatwith the gays). Now, if you know how the world works, and you’re simply watching Fox News objectively, then I can understand that, but the fact of the matter is that that’s probably not happening–it’s a terrible network to do that with. They feed on your paranoias and take small truths and blow them out of proportion using the slippery slope argument–which is a giant fucking logical fallacy.
Any of you who take one side strongly, whether it be protesting SB 1070 or shooting Mexicans, look at both goddamn sides first. Both sides have good points and their good ideas. It’s to easy to lose yourself to the bipartisan bullshit that the media is feeding you. And by media, I include facebook too. Like I said, I believe that most of the people I know who use facebook to voice their opinions and entirely uneducated on how immigration/healthcare/politics works. It’s really easy to do this. Most of the information out there, anywhere, is one-sided and extensively uses the continuum fallacy (practically synonymous with the slippery slope argument–that there is no middle ground, that your 2 options are for or against something).
One of the biggest problems that seems to cause this issue is our political system. With only two political parties, (I know there are others, but let’s pretend they don’t exist since they don’t for all practical reasons) we have politicians out there who want to make a difference. Let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that all of them out there wish to do what’s best in the world. In order to move up in the world, they have to align their views with their political party. This makes it extremely difficult for any politician to stray away from his party’s political views, and if their terms are fairly short, and an opponent starts the campaign process as soon as one election ends, the only choice for everyone is to keep campaigning. There are a lot of flaws in the system, and we haven’t even gotten to the corruption yet, not that it affects everyone as much as you’d think. Classifying all politicians as completely self-motivated and corrupt is just as stupid as only listening to one side or closing yourself off from learning about the issues because there exists biased information out there. In order for a politician to keep an office, he has to stick to his party’s values, which drastically reduces the possibility for free thought and new ideas.
Look, we are all going to have our own opinions, and we can’t always help them, but PLEASE go educate yourselves before ranting about something which you really don’t understand!
All of these links will help you understand what the fuck is ACTUALLY going on in the world, and how to get through the shit that you’re being fed from other media outlets:
The Economy
Reading through politician bullshit
An article about immigration
Health care podcasts: 1, 2
Long messy all-over-the-place rant-type deal
Guitar, Life, Limb, Music, Philosophy, Time Paradox
Posted June 29, 2010 at 9:14 pm by Severed Head
When I went to see CAKE (for the fourth time! second this year even) the other night, before they played Guitar, John went into his usual brief description about the song and how it was written in a very tall building. I’d heard this many times from the other shows and from many bootlegs. But this time was different. He talked about the meaning of the song, something he so rarely does. He said something along the lines of, “This song is about taking something and just throwing it away. What would happen if you just threw away something really important? Something as OH SO IMPORTANT as music?” When he said this, I laughed hysterically because of the crazy layers of what he was saying, and because the audience was cheering, probably not fully comprehending what John was saying. CAKE have been playing music for years, and I’m sure John has had to give up a lot for music, and over 10 years after the song was written, clearly, he has still not given up on music itself.
I remember reading about it before and writing about it on this website somewhere, but I read about it again recently: Scott Lucas, another frontman from one of my favorite bands, Local H, was talking about, in an interview, how he never left himself any option. He played music because that’s all he left himself. I really feel like that is what I need to do. I’m not sure how exactly I came to this conclusion, but doing anything else has always seemed a bit unsatisfactory to me. I get such a ridiculous amount of job and fascination with all things music. I view playing my instrument as a lifelong journey, not just some temporary outing. More or less, I think, going into the ASU school of music was an effort to prove to myself that I’m a serious musician. And a real one. And here I am! Almost done, and loving it.
But I have another degree coming. But will I do anything with it? And for that matter, does the actual music degree matter? Not really. I don’t want to do shit with either of them. I just got a job with Apple, and I love the company, though I’m kind of iffy about the job sometimes… Well, not even really. I feel like I’m way ahead of my coworkers in my technical support skills, and I genuinely like helping people. It feels good when I get off of a call and my customer is really happy that I was able to help them. Or when I check my customer survey scores and they are awesome! BUT. I guess the big thing right now is that I’m helping people over the phone, and that part kind of sucks. But there are advancement opportunities. And also, the timing sucks. A few weeks ago, for the past few months, I had somehow become a morning person, and was waking up early every day, and didn’t seem to have too much trouble dealing with it. Now, however, now that I’ve taken a 6-3 shift (after trading in my 12:30-9:30 shift!!), I’m no longer a morning person. I can’t stand it, and I can’t get to bed. I’ve been a night person all my life, so what the fuck? This schedule only has 5 and a half weeks or so left to run its course though, so it’s not all bad.
But like I said, I love the company. I can genuinely see myself having a career with Apple. I’ve loved them my life, and they treat me fucking awesomely.
But I don’t want to get too caught up. Not if the alternative is being a musician, whether or not I have healthcare or financial stability.
I suppose I never explained the relevance of the CAKE song, Guitar. Here is the chorus:
If I threw my guitar
Out the window so far down
Would I start to regret it?
Or would I smile and watch it slowly fall- fall- fall?
So… I’ve been thinking about the opposite. Not throwing out music, but rather, throwing out everything else. Most of the crap I own doesn’t have that much real meaning or use to me. Is it really necessary I have all this stuff and waste my time with this crap when I could be playing music? I could be writing songs right this moment, or learning songs, or practicing with a band.
Just some thoughts! I don’t know where I’m going with that or what I want to do about it, or hell, what I want to do with my life. This issue has come up a lot lately. Whenever I get together with my mom, she and my stepdad always ask me at least 5 or so questions about what I am doing after college. And I don’t know. And, from what I can tell, nobody knows. Hell, most people I know get about 2 years into their majors and go “FUCK. I don’t want to do this! I want to switch to this major, but it might take another 2 years, so I won’t”…
My chemistry degree started as something I might like to do. Then changed to the degree I’d use to backup my music career. Now I don’t want to do that at all… My ideal backup career would be something in psychology. A counsellor or therapist of some sort. I think I’d just find that fascinating. I often find myself studying any interaction between humans and analyzing the shit out of everything. I can’t stop. To be able to have that as my job and have people respect my opinion would be wonderful.
But still, right now, it doesn’t really compare to music.
I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, one of which is the Nerdist podcast. Bill Burr, a comedian, was on today’s episode. They were talking about a comedian who said, regarding becoming a comedian and finding your style, “Go out and do 100 shows. Come back and see where you are at that point”… I really feel like that’s what I need to do with music. I just want to get out and play a fucking shit load of shows. Write my own music, particularly, and see what kind of stuff I like playing. Stop trying to be cool, and just play music. Not that I’ve ever really made a conscious effort to be cool, as anyone could tell if they listened to some of the samples of music I’ve recorded… I don’t know. I guess it’s really hard to evaluate the stuff I write, but I know what stuff is cool, and what stuff is not cool. But I guess I probably shouldn’t care? I have no idea. Haha.
But fuck… Basically, I guess I should just get out and play some music and see what happens. See what reactions I get, see how I feel (Again with the analyzing of all human interactions! I cannot stop!)….
Music, Philosophy, Pissed off rants, Propaganda, Robots, Time Paradox
Posted June 28, 2010 at 9:35 pm by Severed Head
It doesn’t get more pop than Bowie! But is is good fucking pop. What the fuck happened, music scene?
Quick Thought: The Internet and Intelligence
Philosophy, Propaganda, Robots, Time Paradox, Website
Posted June 16, 2010 at 9:15 pm by Severed Head
Some people feel that having such a vast array of data available so easily at your fingertips will make us stupider. We will no longer have to learn anything, because we can always google it and learn more about it than most would know in a semester-long class in college.
I, however, make the opposite argument. Since we have so much fucking data available to us, you have little to no excuse as to why you don’t know something. If there’s anything you wanted to learn how to do, I’m sure there’s a page on the internet that talks about it extensively.
Just a thought!
Harrison’s Highly Critical, Judgemental, Elitist Rants Presents: Mac vs. PC
Fun Facts, Philosophy, Pissed off rants, Robots
Posted August 13, 2009 at 10:09 am by Severed Head
Hello, I’m on a mac, and I’d like to preach about how fucking awesome macs are, and how retarded all of you people out there who are arguing with me/other mac users. Well, let me start off with the ads I’ve been seeing on television. The PC ads I’ve seen most recently will show Microsoft giving a customer a thousand dollars or something to go find a laptop. The user will go over to the macs and go “This is too expensive. I feel like you’re just paying for the brand.” Now I admit that this is true. But. That is EXACTLY THE FUCKING POINT. YOU ARE PAYING FOR THE BRAND THAT IS ASSOCIATED WITH QUALITY. Anyway, they eventually buy the PC and they’re like “Yep, found it!” or whatever. First of all, OF COURSE THEY’RE GOING TO PICK THE PC. THERE’S 50 DIFFERENT BRANDS OF PCS OUT THERE. WHICH IS NOT NECESSARILY A GREAT THING BY THE WAY. BUT OF COURSE, IF MICROSOFT GIVES THEM THE MONEY, THEY’RE NOT GOING TO PICK THE 1 OUT OF 50 LAPTOPS WHICH IS NOT A PC. This is the end of the advertisement. Now. This is just my interpretation, but what does it say to you that they don’t, for a second, talk about the quality? That they completely ignore the customer who has already used a PC. 6 months down the road, I guarantee you, that that guy/girl from the commercial has, a number of times, been PISSED at his computer. That said, they did have a series of ads of people who have used PCs for a long time. The one where they went “I’m a PC,” and showed everyone doing various things. OF COURSE YOU’RE A FUCKING PC. THEY STILL OWN MOST OF THE MARKET. THEY’RE STILL POPULAR. THAT DOESN’T MEAN THEY’RE GOOD. AND ALSO NOTICE THAT, AGAIN, SOMEHOW, THEY MANAGED TO FAIL TO MENTION THE QUALITY OF COMPUTERS VERSUS THAT ON MACS, WHEREAS, THAT’S ALL THE MAC COMMERCIALS TALK ABOUT BECAUSE THEY KNOW THAT MACS ARE FUCKING BETTER!
That said, the Apple ads are a little bit hard-hitting and not always accurate, but you know what fucking rocks about macs? They last FOREVER. People argue about viruses being available for the mac. Every few months you’ll see a story in the media about how a mac virus got out. Mostly these articles are published by the uneducated. A virus is a program that you give no access to, which invades and repopulates on your system for nefarious purposes. What all of these articles are referring to is a Trojan. Condom jokes aside/completely ignored, they are files which act as the Trojan Horse did. They can infect your system and fuck around, but only because you downloaded them, and you opened up the installer and let them free. This can be true on any operating system.
One of the main reasons that viruses don’t run on macs is because there’s not a whole bunch of backround programs open at any given time. I mean, there’s the standard stuff, but you can see EXACTLY which applications are open, whereas on a PC, that information is not readily available.
The other main reason is that nobody writes viruses for the mac. Not as many people use macs, so why bother? But the fact is that I don’t have to worry about them.
I also don’t have to worry about Adware/spyware/malware. It just simply doesn’t exist. And I know that the argument out there: “Well, you only get that stuff if you don’t protect yourself, and you roam the internet freely and carelessly.” Uh. Yeah. But that’s what I want to do. What if I want to go to a shit load of shady websites without fucking up my computer? I want to be able to roam the internet carelessly, LIKE I’M DOING RIGHT NOW ON A FUCKING MAC.
The other thing about macs that are better: Crash-proof. I’m not saying they don’t crash, or that my computer doesn’t freeze up in terms of loading times, but we don’t have a blue screen of death. Nearly all frozen processes can be force-quitted because Apple has a system design which allows for all applications to run independently of each other. That is, if Firefox crashes, the rest of the system is not going down with it. On Windows, if one thing crashes, you might as well just restart.
So, in terms of operating systems, you have Windows, Mac, Linux, or other. A lot of people might argue for Linux as well. It’s an open-source operating system that is pretty secure. I might argue for Linux too, IF I DIDN’T HAVE A JOB AND WERE NOT GOING TO SCHOOL. You see, I could learn a new operating system, and spend hours and hours and hours and days and weeks and months finding software that is close to the equivalent of that on Macs and PCs, but why bother? I’ve got fucking shit to do, and I’m happy with my mac.
The other main argument for PC users is gaming. I can’t lie, PC users have more availablity to games than mac users do. But quite honestly, I don’t want to be the kind of person who spends THAT much time and THAT much money upgrading my computer to do this stuff. I can accept those people who do, but we simply have different priorities. Mine is in music and media and all that. Time and time again, it has been shown that macs are simply better at recording music or making movies.
Now, style. If it’s not clear to you already that Vista (specifically, Luna) and XP and all of that were ripping off Mac OS X, then you’re just dumb. They are. That’s all there is to it. They’re constantly playing catch up with the new mac operating system software.
The majority of people I know who are against macs? People who have PCs all of their lives. These are the people who have never BOTHERED to question their choice. The ones who are REALLY skeptical about macs because they are “so elitist” and “cultured” and “intelligent”. GOD FORBID YOU DO SOMETHING SMART AND GO ON AN OPERATING SYSTEM THAT WAS DESIGNED PRIMARILY FOR THE USER SO THAT NEARLY EVERYTHING IS INTUITIVE. And I can understand that the operating system isn’t as intuitive to some people, but that’s because Windows make you go around and try to trick the fucking system into doing what you want it to do. OR. IT’S BECAUSE THOSE PEOPLE ARE JUST FUCKING DUMB.
Harrison's Highly Critical, Judgemental, Elitist Rants Presents: The Misunderstood 'Like' Button
Life, Limb, Philosophy, Pissed off rants
Posted July 30, 2009 at 11:34 am by Severed Head
One thing that bugs me about Facebook is all of the ass holes complaining about facebook, and complaining about stupid shit. One particular complaint I’ve seen many times is about the lack of a “dislike” button. I’ve always though that was a dumb idea. The whole point of the like button, I thought, was so that you don’t have a bunch of ass holes leaving the same goddamn comment on everything. E.g. “Nice”, “cool”, “Haha”, “lol”, “Awesome”, “Me too”, etc. The whole goddamn point is to eliminate that waste, the stupid comments people leave when they have nothing else to contribute. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of stupid comments everywhere for those of you who have a strong desire for people to see your thoughts, even if you really don’t have any. If you click the “like” button, you’re kind of pushed to the side now. Thank God.
The very idea that you dislike something generally means you have a conflicting view. If you do, this generally depends on something. There could always be the “That sucks” comments that could be eliminated, but those are few and far between. Plus, if you had a dislike button, who the fuck would click that in a lot of cases? It’d just be a dick move. I may not be psychic, but I can definitely foresee problems in this hypothetical situation. A friend of yours clicks dislike on a link you posted and offers no accompanying comment, and you get annoyed. Like, what kind of ass hole would you be to just go “Nope” or “Wrong” or “I disagree” and NOT say anything else?!
Plus, you’d have to have an “Undislike” button, and that’s just retarded.
But if it’s really that big of a deal to you to express your discontent with someone’s posting, just type in “Dislike” and hit send if you are that much of a fucking ass hole that you have express you disagree without any goddamn reasoning and that you can’t give the person the time of day to explain yourself. It’s fucking disrespectful.
The bottom line is that, if you don’t have anything to contribute, stop fucking talking. I feel that way about everyone always. If you are entering a conversation just to say “cool”, shut the fuck up, unless you’ve got a goddamn brain to back yourself up.
Letter to Jake about playing music
Awesome thing of the week, Comics, Conspiracies, Dreams, Fun, Fun Facts, Grammar, Guitar, Life, Limb, Lists, Music, Philosophy, Pissed off rants, Plane, Propaganda, Robots, Snakes, Time Paradox, Uncategorized, Website
Posted July 25, 2009 at 11:58 pm by Severed Head
I think maybe we should just start booking gigs here in Phoenix. I will find some that you and I can both make in terms of dates. If we get booked, I’ll really quickly record some shit and send it to you, and we’ll basically jam some songs off of that at the show since we won’t really have time to rehearse.
Just to get the ball rolling and play some fun shows. What do you think?
Harrison’s Highly Critical, Judgemental, Elitist Rants Presents: Drugs, Alcohol, Religion, etc.
Awesome thing of the week, Conspiracies, Dreams, Guitar, Life, Lifelist, Limb, Music, Philosophy, Pissed off rants
Posted May 31, 2009 at 8:55 pm by Severed Head
First of all, let me get this out of the way if any of you are wondering. People are all fucking stupid.
There.
You know why kids who go to Catholic school are fucked up? It’s because they’re raised by people who make certain behaviors taboo. Drinking or drugs or candy or video games or sex or what the fuck ever. Simply, when people are repressed, socially, politically, or otherwise, they end up lashing out, eventually. People who don’t drink who suddenly start drinking do stupid fucking shit and burst out and get drunk. Nearly everyone does. I personally RARELY hear of anyone who starts off drinking light and knowing his or her limit. No, they start off pushing their limit. (This applies to driving too. There’s a lot of ass holes out there slamming on the accelerator to make it to a fucking red light. If this isn’t a perfect metaphor for the folly of this American society, I don’t know what is) And I’m not saying people shouldn’t drink, but they need to practice restraint. Moderation is the key to ANYTHING being good. Our society emphasizes two extremes: instant gratification, and this religious bullshit of nearly everything enjoyable is related to sin.
But here’s why getting drunk is stupid. It’s one thing to drink to get a buzz to relax a bit and get out of your head. It’s another to kill brain cells and act out and deal with your problems, emotionally or socially, with a bottle. People call it social lubrication for a reason. But once you start depending on that for social interactions, you’re fucking pathetic. Plus, let’s be honest. 90% of being drunk is acting like you’re drunk. Alcohol can affect your system, but only as fucking much as you let it. Not only are YOU the one choosing to imbibe more alcohol once you’ve already caught a buzz, YOU are the one deciding to act like a fucking idiot at a party to get attention. And the thing that bothers me most? People embrace this behavior. Everyone does. People enjoy a drunk. At this age at least. Once you get older? Not quite as much. Want to know why? Because it’s fucking pathetic.
Now, I’m all for the idea that life is about your interactions at people and that, while we’re here in our short lives, we should enjoy it, but personally, the large majority of people I know drink in order to be someone else. They’re almost repressing an alternate identity, and then when they drink, letting that personality come out to become the drunk version of themselves where it’s acceptable to act on impulse and do stupid things.
Largely, drinking is self-destructive. So are drugs and any other form of acting out. Sex with strangers or people you just met. etc. This doesn’t seem apparent to a lot of people. This is because, going back to earlier, our society emphasizes this instant gratification bullshit. AND YOU ALL GIVE INTO IT. There are a few good ones out there, but let’s be honest, THIS BASIC PRINCIPLE IS HOW OUR COUNTRY JUST GOT FUCKING FUCKED. People don’t want to put in the goddamn hard work to make money these days, and some ass holes making money on buying and selling stocks made some decisions that fucked us, the general public. I don’t want to get political here, because I don’t think it’s a political issue. Stupid people got into too much debt, putting trust into companies who are supposed to keep one’s money safe, but DIDN’T because they were too busy fucking around trying to make a quick buck. And I mean. I can understand where these bankers and stock traders who fucked our shit up are coming from. They don’t want to work hard. They want to take the quick, easy option, and make lots of money. Nearly everyone who comes into my store wants a new condition book for a used price. Everyone wants to be on the winning end of a good deal, yes? But when it comes down to taking the easy option over the hard option, the easy option almost always wins. The hard option might take a bit longer to pay off, but that’s not what we want. Well, let me tell you this, kiddies. If you keep taking those easy options, you’re going to fail, and you’re going to be pathetic. Andrew W.K., not exactly a great philosopher, someone who preaches partying and instant gratification, outside of his music, does have a really great idea. I remember watching an episode of his show where he said “Nothing easy is ever good, and nothing good is ever easy.” I don’t like maxims that use “nothing” and “ever”, but looking at my life and everyone’s around me lately, it has never seemed more true than right now.
Adam Carolla has a podcast, and with nearly every guest that comes on, Adam asks “What’s your story? How did you get to be successful?” You know many of them said shit like “Well, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and I got lucky?” NONE OF THEM. IT TAKES FUCKING BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS TO GET TO ANYWHERE REMOTELY RESEMBLING THE TOP. Do you think it’s any coincidence that Brian May and Paul Gilbert, arguably two of the greatest and most successful guitarists, who get to do whatever musical projects they like without worry for money or approval from critics, don’t do drugs or drink heavily? IT’S NOT. And I want to be at that level, personally. I’d love to have complete artistic freedom, playing music with my idols, or able to play with any musician I want. As my old chemistry teacher said, it’s the American dream to aspire to mediocrity. Well, I say: FUCK THAT SHIT. I’m not going to settle. I’m sticking to my fucking morals and my beliefs and my work ethic, except that instead of just sticking with that stuff, I’m going to keep making it fucking better. A lot of you know that I’ve worked harder and fucking harder each year for my life. I’m doing two majors at college, and two of the hardest fucking majors, I might add, and I’m doing it in just a bit more than 4 years. I’m not going to sit on for 5 years of college and hope everything works out, I’m fucking making it work out.
And you think Paul Gilbert and Brian May and all these great musicians are naturally that way? Of course not. I read this wonderful article by my guitar instructor talking about some of the great musicians of all time, the classical composers. Do you think they just got more inspired than everyone else, and that’s why they’re so good? No. They put hours and fucking hours into their craft. They worked their goddamn asses off to get to a level of musicianship some of us can hardly comprehend. This shit takes fucking time and hard work. And now their music is still being played today. More than half the shit on the radio is never going to be heard from again 100 years from now, but people are going to keep listening to and playing Bach forever.
And let me just add, by the way, that most of you people out there who really need the help don’t fucking accept it. My beliefs and my ideas about alcohol and drugs go against nearly EVERYONE’s I know, and I hardly exaggerate. I have a few friends and a wonderful girlfriend who agree with me and who curtail these stupid behaviors, but I must emphasize how few these people are. And it’s hard. It’s hard for me to maintain certain friendships and seeing them go down this road and not giving into the ease of mediocrity. It’s fucking hard as well. So why do I do continue to be such a stubborn ass hole when it comes to drugs and alcohol or being lazy? Because, like Andrew says, nothing good is ever easy and nothing easy is ever good.
Top 2008 Albums! (10 of them!)
Lists, Music, Philosophy, Pissed off rants, Website
Posted December 31, 2008 at 5:30 pm by Severed Head
Holy SHIT it was hard to pick albums this year! Here’s what I had to say last year:
Every year must have its mandatory top 10 list. I normally listen to a few certain albums a year, and when I listen to those albums years later, and they remind me of that year/time/certain feeling. So here are my favorite/most listened to albums this year. Hopefully when I listen to these later, they will remind me of the better times of this year. Also, it’s in reverse numerical order. Kind of like some sort of stupid countdown…. One last note before we start: A lot of people choose the top 10 2007 albums list as all the albums released in 2007. Well I don’t know that I even have any CDs released in 2007 other than In Rainbows or The Dethalbum (and Cannibal! Which didn’t make it onto the list! Shit!). That’s because none of my favorite bands released anything good this year. Nobody in general did. It’s been the year of shite-indie-bands-that-sound-exactly-the-same-as-every-other-shite-indie-band and way-too-much-screamin’-metal.
So yeah, just pretend I said that about this year too. Actually, a few of these did actually come out this year, or in 2007… Some are even left over from 2007, in that, I started listening to them then, and continued listening to them a lot in 2008. Anyway… I had a really REALLY hard time picking. At first, I was like “What the fuck am I going to pick? I can only think of 2 albums (now the top 2)… ANYWAY. JUST READ.
10. Ben Folds-Rockin’ the Suburbs
Pretty good! I got this album a while ago, and had always known Fred Jones, Part 2 (with John McCrea from Cake!!!), but I never realized how talented and funny Ben was until I met my wonderful girlfriend Julia. Anyway, it’s a really entertaining, catchy album, even if it is a bit pop at times.
9. John C. Reilly-Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
A collection of joke songs, kind of… But some of them are actually really damn good! In fact, most of them are pretty damn good, whether they were created for a parody movie or not… A lot of this reminds me of driving around in my car and singing at the top of my lungs… I would always have to warm up with other songs on this album before I could really get at the stronger ones like A Life Without You (Is No Life at All).
8. Jon Brion-Synecdoche, New York
It was such a hard pick between this and Eternal Sunshine, but I chose this because I’m still addicted to it. And with Eternal Sunshine, I skip over a lot of the non-score songs (not Beck though!!)… Anyway, aside from this being a perfect movie, I also feel that the soundtrack is pretty fucking amazing too.
7. Radiohead-8 Outtakes from Anesiac
While not much of an official album… In fact, I’m not sure if it was ever released… Anyway, this is one of the best collections of Radiohead’s songs out there. It’s a lot better than Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief, the two albums it falls between… What a relaxing album. I must thank my friend Caroline for emphasizing how amazing this is.
6. YMCK-Family Music
Again, a really hard choice to say whether this was more prominent/favored than Family Racing. I chose this because I know all the songs a lot better. Family Racing still feels a bit more… Which is a bit odd, since I listened to them about the same amount… Maybe that makes the other one better. But this one has stuck with me more, which is why I chose it. So fuck off if you don’t like it.
5. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds-Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
My favorite Nick Cave album in a long time! This goes particularly well with Grinderman. Anyway, again, I associate these both with driving A LOT. I remember listening to these on my trips to/from Flagstaff/Tucson. Good times!
4. KoRn-Untitled
Just when I thought I would never get back into KoRn, they come together and create a masterpiece. It probably never would’ve happened if not for the last track… And of course, seeing Jonathan Davis perform with a mind-blowing acoustic group in early December of last year.
3. Local H-Ham Fisted
Nearly forgot about this one! I had never really hard this album, but when I heard Local H play Feed in L.A., I knew I had to get into it… That song, for being composed primarily of like two riffs, is AMAZING!
2. Bumblefoot-Abnormal
Whoa. Just whoa! When I first heard this, I thought it SUCKED compared to Normal, but then it really grew on me. It’s a completely different way of organizing an album and bringing together a collection and making a concept album… And it fits perfectly. Once again, Bumblefoot has outdone himself!
1. Local H-12 Angry Months
Wahhh. One of my favorite albums ever. I listened to this album once or twice a day pretty much every day during May and June. Almost every day, when I’d drive to work, I’d listen to this… So I associate a lot of it with where I would be when I was driving. For example, I’d almost always get to “Jesus Christ…” right around when I was arriving at work. And then, when I’d go on lunch, I’d continue the album, so, particularly, the last 4 tracks, remind me of going to Taco Bell or Kyoto Bowl (which has horrible food, but I can still taste it when I listen to some of these!)… I love all of these songs and almost always have since I heard it, but Hand to Mouth brings back the most emotions in me.
Honorable mention:
Beck-Odelay
Blur-Blur
Jon Brion-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Carter Burwell-Burn After Reading
Paul Gilbert-Silence Followed by a Deafening Roar
Paul Gilbert & Freddie Nelson-United States
Jonny Greenwood-There Will Be Blood
Grinderman-Grinderman
Liars-They Were Wrong, So We Drowned
Local H-The No Fun EP
The Offspring-Rise & Fall, Rage & Grace
Serj Tankian-Elect the Dead
Roger Waters-The Pros & Cons of Hitch Hiking
YMCK-Family Racing
Hope you enjoyed that. Not much else to say. Haha… Looking at the scene in general, it hasn’t changed a lot from 2007. The biggest problem though? Going to last.fm and seeing that the number 1 artist right now is Coldplay. What. The. Fuck…. Is wrong. With. YOU. FUCKING. IDIOTS. No, I’m just kidding. I mean, everyone is entitled to their own opinion in music… But seriously. Coldplay? Really?! REALLY?!
God… WHy is Britney at number 17?! And Oasis at 13?! GAHHH