Goodbye Blogger. (Bitchy breakup letter)

I'm dumping you for your much more attractive cousin, Tumblr.

I... just want you to understand that this has nothing to do with your personality. You're a perfectly wonderful person... it's just... you're not pretty. Your CSS is lacking flair, and your prebuilt themes are an eyesore.

Get a makeover.

You can check out me and Tumblr over here. We'll be making out or something, I hope you don't mind.

String instruments (and music in general)

There's nothing really like a string section. I mean, I play guitar, but I don't really mean guitar. I mean violins, and violas, and cellos, and all that jazz (no pun intended).

I've kind of been thinking about that because me and some totally rad kids are kind of in a band now, which has the tentative title of Soldiers and Sailors. Now, the cool thing about this band si that for the first time I get to fulfill my childhood dream of playing music alongside a string section! Kind of! I mean, it's a violin and a cello, but hell, it sounds good enough.

So anyways, me and Lilah have been practicing (and there are OTHER MEMBERS TOO), and I think we play a pretty mean cover of Casimir Pulaski Day, which is by this totally rad guy called Sufjan Stevens, and if you haven't heard of him then your ears probably hate you. (No really, this man is kind of a god)

This year has been surprisingly slow in regards of new music for me, but I think I'll throw out some suggestions just in case anyone needs some new tunes for their tune-machine (And yes, I know I'm late to the party on lots of these, but DEAL. It's good music)

1. The aforementioned Sufjan Stevens, and most importantly, his ridiculously epic masterwork known as Illinois. Orchestral acoustic, which is hard to find, and absolutely breathtaking.

2. My personal new favorite country band, the Avett Brothers, who, in addition to actually being brothers (at least some of them) play some very good music. Very raucous, twangy, and full of verses about ladies who leave them- my type of thing.

3. Last (for now), the charmingly Scottish Frightened Rabbit. High energy fuzz rock with just enough pacing for me to enjoy it. And don't be a genre-whore about this, I really don't care what you want to call  this particular brand of indie electronica nu-orchestral or whatever. I don't know exactly what to call Frightened Rabbit so I took my best guess.

Anyways, listen to this stuff. It's good.

Short Minecraft Picdump

So I figured I should put these online somewhere, and this is it. MOAR INCOMING.

Comic Books

So, I just finished reading up to issue 68 of The Walking Dead, a comic by some guys who do other comic stuff, apparently. It's a fantastic comic, but it has the same underlying issues that prevent me from really getting into comic books.

The main issue with comics, for me, has to be the sense of perpetuity. In one of the ending 'letters from fans' sections of the comic, one of the authors (don't know who, can't remember which comic it was from) mentions that the series has "a good few years if not decades" to go.

I guess for the average comic book reader, this isn't a bad thing. But speaking as a much more avid BOOK reader than a COMIC BOOK reader, I find that somewhat irritating. Comics aren't accessible to most of the general public because they go on for FUCKING EVER and no one knows where to start.

Let's say I want to read some Batman comics. Where do I start? The old, golden age Batman comics? The gritty, new Batman comics? Fucking Justice League? There's a billion-odd storylines to consider, plus I'm sure I'd have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the superhero universe to even understand a majority of the references.

Successful comics (I say 'successful' here because they crossed over to the public mainstream) are typically those that have a set end point, like the fantastic Watchmen. They have a beginning, a chunk of middle, and then an end. No dorky spinoffs, no ridiculously complicated storylines, nothing to stop a reader from just picking up the first episode and reading through it.

Back to The Walking Dead. It's a great comic, and I advise you all to read it. That said, it's still a comic, so it goes on for fucking ever and the only way to really understand it is to start from the beginning. Whatever.

/rant

Senior Year

I know I haven’t blagged in a while, but I’ve been concerned with other stuff.

So what’s new? Well, I’m a senior.

Which is so cool. How cool? So cool that in a few years, I’m going to think I was the biggest douche in history.

You see, think of my self-esteem as… a butterfly.

Butterflies, in case you don’t know, fly in butterfly patterns. It’s a scientific term, look it up. They go up and then down. (I was going to use a rollercoaster for this metaphor, but that is way too cliche)

So in junior year, I was kind of on the uptick. (following the metaphor, I was reaching for the sky on my beautiful, beautiful butterfly wings) Now, in senior year, I am reaching the apex of this arc, and I am happier than a kid in a Lego store.

Also, I’m writing a musical. And possibly another. Stay tuned.

Do you like wiggling?

YES I DO I, IN FACT, AM A SEMIPROFESSIONAL WIGGLER

Ask me anything

Do you feel that people take you seriously, or do they always seem to think you're just kidding around? If so, either way, is it beneficial?

I am a really, really cynical, sarcastic person. So I don't exactly blame people when they rarely take me seriously. It's not their fault, I've set it up that way, whether I want to or not.

That said, it is frustrating sometimes. I'm a funny guy, I kid around, but sometimes stuff is serious and it's times like those that I get a bit annoyed when people don't take me seriously. Typically I try to solve that by being louder, but for some strange reason that doesn't seem to work so much.

Is it beneficial? If I want to be not taken seriously, it's great. But if I do, it's a bit frustrating.

Ask me anything