Friday, March 15, 2013

She's A Cat Burglar


Drinking chai lattes.  How appropriate!

As you can tell from yesterday's post, it was a bit of a rush job, since I attempted to get it done in my last 40 minutes of work, but I kept getting interrupted, so everything was quite disjointed and unfinished.  But today is a little bit different, just need to work on a discussion paper and take it easy so I should be able to blog well.

Finally sorted through my new music, and I gotta say that I'm thoroughly impressed with a lot of the stuff I got.  Macklemore, old and new Kaki King, new Matchbox Twenty, Rush, even new Van Halen, and Mandy Moore have been fantastic.  Mandy Moore especially, has come into her own as a singer songwriter, who has really left the teen pop mould behind.  Very mature, often dark, witty lyrics and great delivery.  I wish she commanded the same sort of sales that she used to, but at least she has legitimacy now.  It took a hell of a long time to sort through, but I'm glad I did, as I have music added to my iPhone and of course to my computer.

Feeling quite tired today, but at least it's Friday, so I can sleep as soon as I get home for as long as I want!  It's also vanilla coke and good game night.  Should be relaxing!

Could I figure it out?  You should have been smarter.  But that would be wrong.

I've got 2 and a half hours until I have to go home, so let's see what I can come up with?

Damn, well time flew by, and now I've got only 80 minutes until home time!  I think today I wanted to talk about prisoners and prisoner's rights.  Now, I'm quite anti crime and I have no sympathy for criminals generally.  However, I am of the firm view that prisons are not really there to rehabilitate offenders, but merely to punish them, which defeats the purpose of having prisoners go in to learn their lesson and come out to reintegrate with society.  If people have committed a crime and are truly remorseful and can mend their ways, then by all rights, they should be allowed to re-integrate with society.  However, we know that prisons are overcrowded and that in general population, white collar criminals are mixed with hardened repeat offenders.  And I think therein lies the problem.  Society is too tough on crime.  There should be absolutely zero tolerance for it, because if we take an example of a person who has just committed a crime and ends up in prison, they will be abused and integrate with criminals.  When they have reached their point of no return, they will basically just give up on being good and being accepted by society.  So when they get out, the urge to commit more crimes is with them, as they don't really have anything to lose.  The incentive to re-offend and not get caught is higher than trying to be good once released, because you don't do the appropriate amount of time for the offence.

And that right there is a flawed system.  They don't have any rights. 

I'll keep it brief for now.

Joaquin out.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

I Thought It Meant Something Else


Or at least it did, in another language! 

Today is a strange day.  Like it's a good day to be alive, but am I really feeling it?  I'm not sure.
Things have been pretty busy at work, hence no real stuff to blog about in-depth, but I've still gotta write, otherwise things will start to decline sharply.

Got some decent guitaring jams in last night, but not as much as I had hoped.  Oh well, there's always tonight.  Got really lost in this awesome track that the other created, which is a pulsating guitar and driving rock track, which is quite heavy.  But I play bass on it (for the first time), and background guitar on the bridge, but in the solo the other and I actually play two simultaneous guitar leads!

I'm out.

Joaquin goneee!

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Talla-Hae


Well at least maybe if I knew what I was doing.  Early morning starts are the absolute worst, especially after my legs are not feeling 100% with the program.  At least I can spend all day stretching it out.

Had a great time jamming to my own tracks last night.  A while back, when I was using a different soundcard (I think it was a soundblaster live USB input one), I could connect my guitar lead straight into the line in input and record directly into Adobe Audition (hacked to full version, of course).  But most of the time I would use my old hewlett packard mic and just play my old Jordin electic but not wired into anything.  So needless to say, the sound quality was pretty poor, and I also had tabs as a backup in the dropbox folder that the other and I share.  I think that's definitely a skill that all guitarists (and musicians) have to learn.  Just playing along to other music.  It makes you a better player, and you learn how certain notes interact with chords, and you start to construct riffs and passages and licks that you can transpose to other keys, and just play at different speeds.  I had a great time!  Some unique ideas coming out, and I should start with some new stuff.  But lyrics are just as important, and I haven't written any in god knows how long.  It has literally been years, and that's terrible.  I also need to try better, because I need loads of work on lyrical melody to fit with chords and rhythm structures.  It's a very complex thing.

God I am so hungry, but I have to wait 40 or so minutes until I can actually eat something.  Blargh!

Still watching Robotech and Teknoman on a regular basis, and I'm so happy!  It's not just great tv, it's just great tv, period.  I'm just concerned that despite both shows having a general anti-war tone, that Robotech tends to glorify it a little, as Rick Hunter gradually becomes a fully fledged soldier and becomes indoctrinated into the whole military industrial complex.

Good to get some work done, but I'm really looking forward to getting home and eating something.  Short week has messed everyone up in terms of alertness and motivation to get things done. 

Blargh.  What a waste.

Joaquin out.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Fever, Of The Yellow Variety

Ever since I've gotten into Girls' Generation, and especially visiting Malaysia again, I've seen a very heavy attack of the yellow fever.  Haha, ok yes so it's probably pretty derogatory thing to say, but for lack of a better term (can you imagine the PC: preference for asian women instead), I'll just continue with it.

I never used to find Asian women attractive, nothing cultural or even racist about it, I just did not find any attractive, and good lord, I did try.  Then out of nowhere, it just hit me and I'm falling over myself here.  Preferences and biases change as you get older, and most of the time for the strangest of reasons.  Funny how the world, and even your own psyche works.

It's not like I'm now experiencing an Asian fetish or something like that, it's just that now I am recognising and celebrating the beauty of women of Asian descent.  Not to the exclusion of others, certainly not.  Women of all races can be attractive, and generally, what I tend to find attractive, others do not.  I'm not like anyone else.

Wish I could have expanded on this in some depth, but I need to play some guitar and watch some youtube.

Ok that's it for now.

Joaquin out.

Friday, March 08, 2013

Can There Ever Be A Return?


A return to normalcy I mean?  I doubt it, I very much doubt it.

After the genius of yesterday's post, I know I cannot top it.  So what to do, what to do?

Ahh now the question remains how I can get through the 3.5 hours of work remaining!  3.5 hours until the end of the week and I can go home and relax with some vanilla coke and some tv!  Got a lot to catch up on.

Hahah I recall a quote on a friend's tumblr along the lines of "i'm more concerned with the speed of my internet connection than I am with the direction of my life" and I thought that was spot on, and hilarious!  I know the direction of my life currently is not what I want.  And I'm definitely concerned with the speed of my connection, I was so happy when my net rolled over.  I'm hitting up youtube like it's nobody's business!

Think I've finally cottoned on to what was causing my chest pains - the weird way in which I sleep.  I had my arm up on my side, leaving my shoulder in heavy contact with the mattress, so that was probably what was causing my erratic chest pains.

Caught up with Rossco for lunch, which was weird to say the least.  Don't think he's really caught on to the whole idea that the whole friendship fell apart because of him and his actions.  I tried, but oh well!  Don't think I'll be seeing him again.

I prefer light lunches, I really dislike the feeling of eating so much at lunch that you feel stuffed for the rest of the day.  I eat a light breakfast and a light lunch and can then do a heavy dinner (if needed), or a regular dinner with some dessert. 

Things look beautiful outside from this window.  Maybe it was just the music.

Looking forward to more guitar shennanigans tonight, I'll get back into it heavily over this weekend.  Luckily it's a long weekend and I can put up with a short week next week, and it's pay week!  What more can you love?  Ok under an hour to go now, I'm sure it should be great.  I'm feeling inspired, and I have been working on a new breakdown that I was hoping to put into a new song.

I'll leave it here for now.

10 or so posts away from 1,000 posts!  Not bad, eh?  Hahaha, only took about 9 years!

Joaquin out.

Thursday, March 07, 2013

Things Move Forward, I'm Staying Back


Just woke up with too much pain and tiredness to get to the gym this morning.  As a result, I slept in like a mofo and was a little late to work.  Oh well!  Hopefully I'll be feeling better tomorrow and I'll be back with the program.

Hmmm things feel like I've been sidled out of work here.  Does that not bode well for me?  We'll see.

There's too many balls up in the air at the moment.  What if you can't catch any of them?  You're just stuck there and terrified of the consequences.

Ah yes!  I recall that I was going to go on a rant about the anti-war movement.  I think if you are truly anti-war, you have to be anti troops as well.  I really hate people who say "oh I don't support the war, but I support the troops" because that argument doesn't hold water.  The conservatives have done a bang up job of saying questioning anything is a form of treason and unpatriotic.  What a load of shit!  The American war of independence was caused by people questioning the unfair status quo.  That's something I admire.  And don't say the system now is fair - try being an elderly disabled muslim African American lesbian woman.  You'll see what the definition of unfair is.

The whole idea of the armed forces is to kill.  People go in, and they attract a certain type - alphas, a little unhinged, overconfident, mostly poor, uneducated - people who can be easily brainwashed into dehumanising other people, so that they can take pleasure in killing others.  Humans aren't designed for that sort of reprogamming and horror.  Why do you think so many soldiers come back from duty and start going crazy and killing their partners and themselves?  It's not normal to put a gun in someone's hand and say "kill these people who have done nothing personal against you" and then expect them to come back and have a grip on reality!  Most armies, especially in the West, have not fought a war on their own soil in a very long time.  Therefore, these armies are not 'defence forces' but rather 'aggression forces', and don't talk about pre-emptive strikes, or protecting your own interests on foreign soil, because if you use that argument, it is perfectly valid (and justified under such skewed logic), for enemies to do the same thing to you.  Each side thinks they are right, so everyone is screwed.

I don't really care if soldiers die, the way I see it, that's their job.  You're paid to kill other combatants, or to die, one or the other.  It really grates when I read stories of soldiers letting loose and just killing civilians left right and centre.  That's the problem - in order to psyche up these people to kill, they need to understand that the 'other' or the 'unknown' is to be feared and killed. 

So it's hypocritical for people to say they don't support wars, yet still support the troops, because the troops enable the wars.  Without armies to back governments, or to carry out wars, governments would be less likely to be involved in this sort of behaviour.  After all, it's not them who pays the price, it is the soldiers, and they don't really care about them.  They may act like they do, but that's just to keep up appearances.  If you take away the supply for soldiers, the demand will decrease.  Nobody in their right mind will fight a war if they don't think they can adequately defend themselves, or inflict enough damage on the enemy.

I don't agree with picketing soldiers funerals, because that's incredibly messed up and mean.  But I certainly think you're an idiot for saying "I don't support the war, but I support the troops".  Without the tools to inflict such horror, wars don't happen.  Innocent people don't die on a mass scale.  The current wars are unjust, and anybody in their right mind wouldn't fight in them (at least from the West), because it serves no purpose for them.  So if they are told to fight, they should not.  Yet they do, because they will say that they're ordered to.  Well guess what?  The Nazis tried to pull the same stuff at the Nuremburg trials, and it didn't work for them.  When going 'with the flow', doing the wrong thing is still the wrong thing, regardless of how many people support it, or whether nobody speaks up to stop it from happening. 

It's alright to support the war, I'm not saying otherwise, I'm just saying at least be consistent and don't be hypocritical with your comments. 

Ok, that rant's over, hope it made sense.  I just get so worked up about these things because I just look at what happened to Bradley Manning and it's incredibly infuriating.  The Government likes to say that the army is all about mateship and courage and what not, but Manning exposed crimes against humanity, and war crimes and various other things, yet the Army is in a massive rush to tear him down, and have the people call him a traitor to the cause.  How dare you?  If you believe in war that anything goes, then you're a monster. 

Next rant - feministas or feminazis.  For the uninitiated, it's the term used to describe militant or deafeningly shrieking style feminists who say that basically all ideology at the moment is phallocentric.  Don't get me wrong, I support feminism, women are not afforded equal treatment in Western society, let alone anywhere else.  What I don't like is the idea that these extremely well educated, middle/upper class white women judge foreign cultures on their attitudes to women.  Wages for women in the West are far down compared to men.  Yet they still want to say that things here are perfect and that it should be the ideal model.  Things are messed up everywhere!  I'm also not a fan of writing by authors like Clem Bastow and Clementine Ford, who, despite their impressive pop culture and media writing, tend to view guys as essentially women-hating sexual miscreants in waiting.  That's definitely something I take issue with.  It's insidious because it's all incredibly very accusatory "if you look at a woman, you are molesting her" and all this other stuff.  I mean, come on!  Yes, women's issues need to be discussed and drawn to the attention of everyone.  But that sort of screeching doesn't go well to alleviating the stereotype of women as over-emotional hysterical creatures.  There is a great tumblr gif about an over-reaction to just an innocent interaction, but I don't know where it is anymore.  Not all guys are animals, and they shouldn't be guilted into thinking they are when they've done nothing wrong. 

There was a story in the news this week about a young man who was assaulted by police while at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.  Basically he was in handcuffs when he was hit repeatedly in the head and slammed into the ground.  I'm not one for police brutality, since I think police think too much of themselves and that the law doesn't apply to them.  So of course you're getting every fool and his dog complaining on social media about police brutality (especially since this was filmed on a camera phone and then went viral), without realising crap like this happens everyday, and more often than not to indigenous members of society.  So everyone is up in arms about this thing, then today it comes out that the guy in question actually tickled a girl from behind (who was unknown to him).  He was obviously drunk, so she would have been afraid and she reported him to the police who came to arrest him.  Oh, all of a sudden he doesn't seem so innocent now, does he?  If only the hysterical screaming masses who feel disenfranchised by what happened to this guy could battle against the feminazis, I would have a grand day.  Pays to listen to the whole story and get your facts before freaking out about things on social media, isn't it?  The dude deserved a beating, but perhaps not at the hands of the police.  Maybe at the hands of the feminazis?

Those were not good times, so why have they come around again?  Damn, this was a great entry!  Just over an hour to go until I can get home.  Not bad, right?  Haha!

That's it, I can't focus any more.

Food for thought.  Anarchy inside my mind.

Joaquin out.