Google, get your shit together.

Just spent like ten minutes trying to make Google sign me in with the account I actually use instead of the random account Viaero gave me for my phone. Should not have been this hard.

I'm at a show at the Broker, it's all right but I'm rocking beyond nowhere near enough reality right now. I'm trying to think of some way to be productive since I'm far too sober ATM, but this was the closest thing that came to mind.

I've played a lot of chess tonight, trying out Hikaru Nakamura's hyperdefensive strategy as white and the Sicilian Defense as black. I'm getting good at the former, but I get the impression that the Sicilian is hard to play well. My ranking for live chess has improved though... I'm about 1000-1100, only about 100 points below my non-live ranking.

What else... I've been sick since Labor Day. Wouldn't be out tonight except that my friends and I made plans. This is also why I haven't done a comic in three weeks. Well, that and the thesis.

That's coming along swimmingly, though. I made my first map for the thesis this week; just a map of central Asia before Genghis Khan started breaking shit. My advisor says it's pretty good. I've seen the fairly simplistic maps that predominate the field of Mongol studies; putting out something that's got more information while being prettier and easier to read shouldn't be hard. The background in art and geography is helping me a lot. I'll try to provide a pic for the net here soon.

Speaking of random stuff helping out, it turns out Draya spent her childhood riding a Mongolian horse, which is important because they are different from other warhorses. Not as strong or fast, but they can endure twice as much. Mongol strategy often involved pretending to run away and tiring the enemy cavalry out, and then attacking. Mongol horses aren't very common on this continent, so knowing someone who grew up handling one (and dating her, no less) is incredibly lucky.

Apparently one of Draya's relatives is a translator over in Mongolia, to boot. Which gives me heart about this degree, especially if I go on for the Ph.D. Even if I don't teach, I can almost certainly travel abroad and earn a living translating stuff. My Russian skills will help with that too, as they're next door. If I can somehow learn Chinese, I'd be set.

Anyway, enough rambling for now. Now that I, well, have an app for this, I may post more often.

Observations on the Nature of Awareness

Hi all. Long time no blog.

Anyway, I haven't fallen out of the habit of thinking and doing stuff, I just fell out of the habit of posting about it here. Over the summer I wrote a couple essays; what follows below is one such. I wrote it while non-sober, and the state I was in at the time led me to contemplate the nature of consciousness itself. It's rather stream-of-consciousness, but rereading it sober I concluded there was a germ of an idea in there. See for yourself:

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NATURE OF AWARENESS

In the field of music, pitch is inherently associated with emotion, and different pitches with different emotions. Composers and musicians are taught how to exploit these associations, and thereby to trigger given feelings in people.

Pitches are essentially mathematical. In the plainest physical terms, they are the average wavelength of a series of sonic vibrations, and they repeat themselves mathematically. (I say "average" because they can be composed of several different pitches; strumming a guitar to play up to six strings is an example of this, as is picking the strings of a chord shape. Progressions are pitches through time, and therefore represent an elaboration of the emotionality of a pitch.) Take the pitch we call "E." An open guitar string that sounds the pitch of E when played, if doubled in length yet with the same tautness and diameter, will sound an E in the next octave up. Similarly, were it to be cut in half, it would sound an E in the next octave down.

As for octaves: the phrase "octave" is a misnomer. If you have a guitar handy, notice that there are twelve frets to the octave, not eight. However, of those pitches within an octave our modern Western society has socially constructed to divide up into twelve, there are eight chords that seem comparable to our ears. On a guitar fretboard, this is rendered as follows: EF-G-A-BC-D-, with the dashes representing the four pitches that we did not deign to give letters.

Carl Sagan wrote something very unexpected once.

This is pretty impressive.

Apparently, when he wasn't doing Cosmos, he was writing under a pseudonym about the many intellectual uses of weed. Anyone who's remotely interested in either the subject or the man will probably find that article to be pretty cool.

Basically, weed seems like an analogue for dreaming. It combines random ideas in ways that wouldn't have been combined while sober, and therefore produces both incredibly stupid ideas, as well as insights.

The Legacy of the Region 23 Complex and Wellnitz Fires.

A full day of my life later, not counting the interview times.

Thanks for everyone who helped out, one way or another!

What I'm listening to today, April 5th 2014 edition.

I never thought you could get psychedelic with a banjo. I'm suitably impressed.

LA face with a Chadron booty.

Nate and I were hanging out last night, rocking beyond reality, and this song came on the radio. I'm a fan of the Dandy Warhols, but I didn't recognize this song. The jangly guitars at the beginning are supes trippy, and were the perfect end to a very odd night.

Yeah, might as well talk about that night. The Sigma Tau Delta (OMG THAT SPELLS STD!!!) open mics at the Broker have been ongoing since I was an undergrad, but they've been wrecked lately by a particular group of teenagers. We can't actually forbid them from coming, or playing, but we've tried to figure out controls to filter out the worst. Everyone can only do two works now, no sign-ups are allowed after 9:00 PM, and as of last night that seems to have worked. There's a couple people that get up and sing a cappella rather badly, people that read truly shitty stories (," stated James), but it's not as bad as it was two weeks ago.

This is important, because two weeks ago it was bad. Like, if 75% of all the performers were Creepy Dave bad. It was so bad that Nate, Shanda and I had running MST3K-style commentary on Facebook about how bad it was. We also resolved that at the next one, we were all going to deliberately suck. Nate was going to read the lyrics from Rebecca Black's "Friday" in the style of William Shatner, and Shanda was going to read the lyrics from "Ice, Ice Baby." And I? I was going to perform "Baby Got Back," a la the Jonathan Coulton version:

An interview with Nickelback's lead singer. It explains everything.

Trust me when I say that this is worth fifteen minutes of your life.

Chad Kroeger reminds me a hell of a lot of a former friend of mine: a likeable scumbag that will screw you over one day and then buy your booze the next; someone who thinks trite bullshit is profound and gets upset when everyone rolls their eyes, but is inexplicably good at making a shitload of people enjoy his trite bullshit anyway... at least, for a time. Someone that can't stop smoking weed and figures he'll be dead by 50.

Open mics.

A lady got up at an open mic and said she was going to read a poem she had written a long time ago. It sounded suspiciously like an email forward, especially when I heard her claim that certain folds stood for shit in the Bible, because you're forbidden by law from hitting the "forward" button on an email unless you mistakenly believe that America was founded as a Christian nation. So I Googled it, and sure enough it was an email forward debunked on Snopes.

See for yourself.

She even read the "Share this with your friends" crap. So she not only was full of shit about why an American flag is folded, but she was full of shit about it being something she wrote, and she wasn't even clever about hiding it.

And then Fish gets up and talks about period sex. I love this place.

HIstory Harvest Ad Final Take And This Time I Mean It.

After three different recording sessions, this is what we've finally got to broadcast. You'll hear it on the Alleycat and maybe some other stations if we get lucky.

I covered Stairway to Heaven on Wednesday.

Post by The Alleycat.

The universe is not telling me anything.

It's merely coincidence. That's all.

Really.

Shut up.

On guitars, progressions, rock, and worship music.

My friend Vera is hanging out at my place right now and we're playing guitar together.

I've been playing guitar since I was... I wanna say 16? So about 13 years now, and now I feel old. But she just got her guitar this year. She's learned a lot more in this year than I did my first year; I wasted most of my first year or so trying to emulate power metal songs without learning chords or anything but she can play songs already. Granted, they're cheesy three-chord praise and worship songs, but that's still pretty awesome. (For the record, the first songs I learned were also in that genre... and the same goes for a surprising number of musicians. Churches have started musical careers since time immemorial.)

Anyway, I'm giving her some advice because I can. Specifically, I'm teaching her about how progressions work. She started playing this worship song:



I recognize it because I've played it countless times about a decade ago when I was in worship bands. Anyway, apparently my knowledge of music theory's come to a point where I noticed the chord progression and pointed it out to her. I started playing the song above in A instead of D, and then I, without changing the chords, started singing this song:



They have the same progression. The tempo you play changes a bit, but the underlying infrastructure of both songs is the same.

Today's music of choice.

I find myself going on a real psychedelic kick lately: listening to Sky Cries Mary, the Big Pink, and of course a lot of Pink Floyd's early stuff. If anyone knows any other mind-bending music, by all means hit me up in the comments.

Oddly enough, most of the Stones songs I enjoy are on this, their only psychedelic album, long before I knew this album existed. "She's Like A Rainbow" always reminds me of a friend of mine back in my undergrad days, and "2000 Light-Years From Home" is going on an upcoming Doors of Perception.

Every new beginning is some other beginning's end.

My buddy Nate and I have been living parallel lives in reverse ever since July 2011. We've both noted this phenomenon, and with my move, the chapter has finally closed.

July 2011: I arrive in Fort Collins, Colorado on a Greyhound. After hanging out with a friend for the night, he picks me up and we hang out with his brother for a few days at a Rennfaire, and then go to Chadron, where I have a job offer with Wreckers as security for Fur Trade Days.

I'm functionally homeless for two weeks as I take out loans to get a house that I'll share with Nate. I'm crashing on his couch, or when he's got family visiting, in his backyard. His parents are nice and I do a lot of cooking to sort of earn my keep until the stuff I mailed from Portland to myself arrives and we can get a house.

In short order, we do get a house. Technically one-bedroom, the basement can easily serve as a second bedroom. We'll eventually make the mud room (think a garage that you can't park a car in) into a third bedroom. I get the actual bedroom, Nate takes the basement. We don't know this yet, but it will be infested with wasps in short order. We will have a "Bug Board" keeping a running tally of bugs slain by each of us; at last count he was leading 127 to 6.

Nate gets a car. The first time I moved to Chadron, it was for a girl. Her parents still like me, and her dad works at one of the dealerships, and he hooks Nate up with an excellent 2001 Buick with all the stuff for $1800. We have a house, we have wheels. I need a job. He's got a job cooking at the nursing home.

This is pretty much how my interview for the Alleycat went.

The stress of college life.

There's an ad trying to get me to play Naruteymans Z or something on the internet that I just saw on my Deviantart. I don't know why, in this era of targeted ads, they think I'd be interested. While it's true I play a browser-based game, and that I somewhat like anime, I'm not interested in kids' animes.

I'm grabbing ahold of that because that is the least, smallest, tiniest problem I have before me. I think that's the way to go here... ease into this. I just tried to take a sip of water, just to discover my mug is empty. Which reminds me that the office manager (don't dare call the lovely and capable Brenda Brown a mere "secretary" or you'll soon regret it; she really is the most useful person in the office, myself included) has gotten tired of people not pitching in for Culligan water, and has staged a strike. The water cooler has a call to action taped to it. Tragedy of the commons. I'm going to go get some faucet water, I'll be right back.

Coming back from that, I noticed a stress ball on my desk. It's got a smiley face on it and it was given to me by my Intro to Graduate Studies professor. I'm going to skunch him a few times before I continue. There, much better.

Vote beyond reality.

It appears that Nebraska may not be completely lost to the forces of progressivism after all.

We've got constitutional amendments for both medical marijuana and full-on legalization on the ballot in 2014. And believe it or not, I'm pretty confident that they'll both pass.

Why?

Remember, this is an agricultural state. The legalization amendment mentions not just weed, but also hemp. This state could make a killing from hemp farming, especially east of the 100th meridian. Hemp can grow on marginal land that other crops can't, and is worth a whole pile of money. So basically, we could turn over land that's currently making us a couple bucks growing grass for cattle into hemp farms, and our ranchers-cum-farmers would see a pile of money as a result.

I think this issue has been detoxified enough to happen. It's actually bipartisan - a majority of both parties support it. It's happening across the border in Colorado already, and the world has failed to end. Legalizing it here would reduce the headache, and the cops probably wouldn't mind being able to switch their focus to destructive drugs, especially meth. And it's a great way to boost state revenues without raising taxes, especially the hemp provisions.

God yes. I can't advocate for the passage of these two bills enough. We need to make this a weed-friendly state ASAP. It's a foregone conclusion that marijuana will be legalized nationally within two decades. What's being decided right now is what states are going to play host to an established and legalized marijuana industry first. The way some of my friends talk about "California medical" and "Colorado medical" as high-grade, desirable commodities, they could be talking about "Nebraska kush" in future. When marijuana's legalized everywhere, if we're one of the first states to legalize it, we could have already established an export industry with a reputation for quality, the way Colorado and California already have. That doesn't just mean jollies for stoners - that means jobs and a future for our struggling rural areas.

An interesting fact I learned today.

I'm taking a break from writing my paper on the Lost Cause theory of the American Civil War to write about another lost cause.

Because you all just lost.

You're also now blinking and breathing manually, you're now suddenly aware of the weight of your tongue in your mouth and that there's no real good place for it, and some part of your body itches really bad and you must scratch it now.

Probably the thing I'll miss most after I move is dropping a convobomb on my roomie and seeing him stop whatever he's doing to shout "FUCK YOU STU!" Last night he even threw a pen or something at me. Good times.

Penguins and dolphins are jerks, and other things from last night.

S'truth.

I was telling that to Vera last night, as we were drinking. Penguins and dolphins have created their very own "rape culture," as have all manner of other animals. They're also remarkably sentient; apparently scientists have discovered that they call each other by names.

I also talked about the unfilmed script of Firefly, and it was gonna be really cool. When I tried to track it down, I found the tenth anniversary special, which talked about a bunch of script ideas. Alan Tudyk came up with an idea about a planet where they train these vicious dogs, and then Jayne accidentally gets dog pheromone on the crew, so they have to run away until River pets them and they calm down. There were a bunch more... if anyone can find that video, they should post a link.

I dunno. Last night sucked and was pretty good all at once. We watched The Room, need I say more? And now my roomie gets why, every time we're listening to 93.7 and the Windfarmer Energy ad comes on, I say "Oh hi Mahk!"

Vera showed me this.

We were getting drunk... Monday? Yes, Monday. It was midterm break and we were rocking beyond reality. After several drinks, we decided music was a great idea and after the obligatory guitar playing on both our parts, I showed her Terra's Theme from FFVI (I posted it a while back) and she showed me this, because the piano part of Terra's Theme reminded her of this.

I've never played any of the Deus Ex games, but this is great music. It's now the soundtrack to my workday.