Now More Fun

In the Future

Severed Head — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 22:27:46 +0000

In the Future we will have such short attention spans that this will be the future of gaming.

Listen to all the music in my music collection

Severed Head — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:32:53 +0000

Fuck it. That’s right. Most of the Buckethead albums are terrible. I’m going to figure out which ones those are and just delete them. I’ve finally come to a state where I feel I can delete the unnecessary crap. I won’t be going back to listen to them, because they’re bad. I’m still going to keep my discographies and bootlegs from some of my favorite bands, but do I really need music by The Revolting Cocks? Or First Arsch, the early version of Rammstein? No, because they are terrible. That’s right, I’m going back on another lifelist item so that I can do this one. Ridiculous, eh?
Over the next month, I’m going to delete a lot of music that I deem unnecessary to keep. We’ll see how that goes.

Past progress on this lifelist item: 1, 2

Getting old and knowledge

Severed Head — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 05:47:00 +0000

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.

Learn the entire catalog of ballboy

Severed Head — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 22:07:15 +0000

Finished. Finally. Took a lot longer than I thought it would. That said, I did things differently throughout. Each album ended up looking different in its sheet music file/structure, but I’ve got it down now. I don’t remember what I last decided or what I last wrote, but, basically, my goal is to be able to make a short version of the sheet music, and a long version. My goal is to be able to play the song with only the short version. The long version isn’t much different, but has lyrics too. And if I need lyrics, whatever, I guess that’s cool too. Basically, I just want to get all these songs down and into a nice PDF with good font and working links (so that I can tap the album name/index, then the song name, and have my sheet music come up)… Ideally, I’d like to be able to read this on an iPad, so that I could have entire discographies of sheet music at my fingertips, but I don’t have one, so I’m stuck with an iPod Touch, which is still pretty good.
Now to the ballboy aspect of things! What do I have to say about ballboy after playing through every song? There is obviously a definite style there. Gordon rarely strays from the I-IV-V, but all the songs still sound good. One reason it is kept so well together is the way he relates the words to what chord is being played. For example, the word “home” will be sung at the same time as the I chord, and the tension of the lyrics will be over the V chord. It’s the subtleties that really make ballboy sound so great… Aside from the obvious: the heartfelt, incredibly personal, intimate lyrics. The melodies just stick in your head and stay there. There were songs I didn’t care for at all, “We’ve All Had Better Days” for example, that I love now.
It’s interesting to see the arrangements change over time. At the beginning, on the first album, Club Anthems, almost every arrangement is different. The second album continues with different arrangements and different textures. The third album is almost entirely acoustic. It’s kind of a breakup album. Almost all the songs have the same chord progression repeated over and over throughout the entire song, without any bridge or structure at all. It shows the kind of loop that one gets stuck in after a breakup. The endless cycle. It works perfectly!
The later albums end up with more instruments being used for different effects, and newer different chords. Key changes even! But the recording quality definitely suffers on I Worked on the Ships, the latest album. I had already heard most of the songs in their purest version, with Gordon on acoustic on his podcast, so the only newness upon first hearing the album were the arrangements-and they are terrible. Disney’s Ice Parade on ukulele? Why? It takes away any of the weight of the song.
All in all, I feel like I’ve learned a lot more about songwriting and how songs work, and how to be a good musician with only 3 chords. Hopefully I’ve subconsciously learned a little something about melody too.
Next is how to become a successful musician with 3 chords, some distortion, and some screaming. Here I come, Nirvana!

Past progress on this lifelist item: 1, 2, 3

Anime IRL

Severed Head — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:57:49 +0000

HOLY CRAP FRIGGIN INTENSE

Harrison’s Highly Critical, Judgemental, Elitist Rants Presents: Strong Opinions

Severed Head — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:28:12 +0000

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

Hair

Severed Head — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:50:14 +0000

WTF happened, George?!

Evil country gypsy jam

Severed Head — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 01:36:39 +0000

Best jam ever. Best listened to through a fine set of headphones so you can hear everything. Only so many drummers out there can sound quite as mad as Crumb Bandit. He’s like a mad scientist, this one.
COMING SOON INFILTRATION

The future of music

Severed Head — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:34:34 +0000

DIGITAL DRUGZ

Stuff that’s different

Severed Head — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:16:24 +0000

Now More Fun is currently going through some wacky changes. There is extra shit here and weird shit there. I apologize, but it might be a while before we fix this shit up.

Also, do YOU — yes you! Want an e-mail? Address? One that ends with nowmorefun.com? Go ahead and come on and ask in the comments today!