Entries from September 2006 ↓

I finally pulled my concetration together long enough to record a mix of songs that sounds somewhat credible. There are a few rough edges, but it’s my first attempt and I had had a “few” drinks at the time too. I’ll probably submit it to the the Mixtape Sessions and if I’m lucky they’ll let me play live.

Without further ado: JetPilot – Friday mix 1.mp3

Tracklisting:
1. Goldfrapp – My number one
2. Superpitcher – Mushroom
3. Bosco – Hi & Hat
4. Dead Language – Optik
5. Daft Punk – The Brainwasher
6. Pet Shop Boys – A Red Letter Day
7. Miss Kittin – Stock Exchange
8. Hope – Tree frog
9. Animal Machine – Persona
10. Justice vs Simion – Never Be Alone
11. Daft Punk – Technologic
12. Blur – Girls and Boys
13. Minimal Compact – Deadly Weapons
14. The Juan Maclean – You can’t…
15. Babylon Zoo – Spaceman
16. Blur – Trade Stylee
17. The Faint – Agenda Suicide
18. Arkana – House on Fire
19. The Living Things – Bom Bom Bom
20. Guns & Bombs
21. Orbital – Doctor
22. Para One – Dadum Dan
23. Peaches – Fuck the Pain Away
24. The Futureheads – Skip to the End

I did this very long geek test and got
40.23669%

I had my humongous and eclectic music collection on random today – and Gary Numan’s Moral came on. I immediately recognized the tune, although not as being a Gary Numan song. I recognized it as Nine Inch Nail’s song Metal on the “Things falling apart” EP, which, after further investigation credits the song back to Gary Numan. Lyrics are different, but same tune.

I love finding these weird interconnections, even if they were obviously there in the CD cover credits.

I’m glad I have a girlfriend who finds things like this cute. Otherwise she wouldn’t understand half the romantic things I do.

The awesomest form of music (SIDs) just blew the roof off of awesome with this.

Recently I finished reading Getting Things Done by David Allen, and this had led me to have about 20 lists for different “contexts” and “projects” with a total of around 400 things I need to do. It’s all about capturing everything that isn’t the way you want it – or “open loops” as the system calls them. The whole premise is, that once you have everything written down, you don’t have to worry about remembering them all and you can begin to relax because everything is down on those lists. Even if you’ll never get around to half the things, it certainly reduces stress and increases productivity. Another benefit is that when you are working/thinking, your mind is unhindered from having to remember trivial things. Mind-like-water is the term David Allen uses.

As a consequence of adopting this system I’ve been spewing out new ideas for websites. All of which have the potential to be pretty big. My friends and readers will already know about AmplifyMe – but that is a pretty huge project – and before I attempt that I think I’ll work on another much simpler idea, but one that I think would be pretty damn handy. This’ll be project for which I can get to grips with Ruby on Rails and agile web development. I’ll be using AJAX and Web 2.0 practices (Man, checkout the buzzwords, it’s like I’m Awesome 3.4 and Sassy 5.2, or maybe just TTH – Trying Too Hard).

I was listening to some song lyrics a couple of days back which had the line “you have to die to go to heaven”. Which struck me as such an incredibly odd thing about religion, but then religion is about faith, and nothing takes more faith then dieing in the hope of eternal salvation – even as misguided as I think it it.

I’m sure many others have expressed these thoughts, but I’ve always thought that religion must have been created as the ultimate way of controlling crowds. Think of the sway religious leaders have in world politics and how it allows them to control their flock. Hell, people even blow themselves up with the conviction that they’ll “get” many virgins for their sacrifice.

I’m sure in the past religion was a great coping mechanism for dealing with our mortality. If you live a good life, and follow these simple rules, then you’ll be accepted into a wondeful kingdom when you die. It’s a lovely thing to believe, and they added an extra clause for the people that were kind of hesitant: If you DON’T do these things, then you’ll burn and be exposed to eternal suffering. With that kind of choice, most people would probably just go along with it “just in case”. Probably in the same way that people on their death beds, on death row, or who are about to “face their maker” all suddenly want to have a priest with them and do some last minute praying (I’m interested to know how I’d behave in such a situation, I honestly don’t know).

In some ways I liken the thought of heaven, at the end of life, to how I use suicide when I’m depressed. When things are going crap and nothing is working out, you can rest assured that, so long as you are repentant for your sins and swear to live a good life, you’ll get into a lovely place at the end of it all. When I’m in a similar situation, I think that if life gets to bad then I am ultimately in control of my existance. I can push the eject button if I become desperate. Nothing for anyone to worry about, I’m not at risk of doing anything drastic, I just know that I use it as a comforting thought in tough times. Kind of like someone owning a gun for self-protection, just knowing you have it there to protect you is enough, even if you never use it.

There is one final point I’d like to make. I am a huge believer in relative happiness – the idea that happiness or sadness, when related to life circumstance is completely relative. If you lose a limb, that really sucks for several months, but if you are asked about your happiness and are compared to the happiness of someone who is able-bodied you’ll most likely be on par with them. For the same reason, people who win the lottery, after the first couple of months, don’t think they are any happier then before their strike of luck. For this very reason the idea of heaven seems strange – if this is meant to be the kingdom of happiness then how are you meant to maintain it? Do you just continue to be exposed to more and more happiness-creating events until you implode with ecstasy?

By coincidence, while writing this entry I was listening to a John B mix that has a quote of a Dylan Thomas poem “And death shall have no dominion” – 3:50 of this mix. Pretty damn awesome, and I often disregard poetry, so that is saying alot:

I was going through some papers and found a photo of my bro when he was in the RockQuest (he’s the one on the left). He even got in the newspaper and everything. Awesome.

I like to think this means that I’m musically awesome too, but there is the small difference of him practicing lots and lots. I think I’m too busy (lazy?) to progress my musicianship beyond home entertainment.

After a brief conversation with Pagurus, we concluded that lone wolf is awesome. Whether we are talking about the Eels song or the RPG series. The dictionary even says so:

So I’ve just returned from Japan, and hopefully I’ll make a bit of a summary of it within a week or so. In the meantime, I’ve provided a direct experience I had with engrish, the hotel toothpaste.