Musics

I recently passed the 2,000 song mark on my iTunes library. Currently it is at 2,025 mp3's, not including podcasts. Until a couple weeks ago, that was something I felt ashamed of saying. I have friends with between 3,500 to 6,000+ songs. One of my substitute teachers claimed that he had over 30,000(!) songs. He was pretty chill, so I didn't deny it.

I used to tell people that I could name the artist of any song on my library within five seconds of the music playing. I can do that for most of the music now, but definitely not all of it. Looking back, it seems like I said that because I wanted to make it seem that people who had lots of music just downloaded it by the truckload, while my music was selective and carefully handpicked.

Between 6th-8th grade, I only listened to hip-hop/rap (gasp!). Starting freshmen year, I mixed it up and got really into classic rock, particularly the Beatles, Stones, Who, Queen, but eventually the Grateful Dead, Van Morrison, and Eric Clapton. That era peaked mid-sophomore year.

Now, I like to think that I have a good taste in music. When I "Shuffle" on my iPod, anything from Van Morrison to Lady Gaga to the Sex Pistols to Odd Future could hypothetically appear. But who cares about that? How many times have you been asked, "How diverse is your music collection?" No. You get the same question every time: "What do you listen to?". My answer would be music.

Besides country.




Comment, share, enjoy.

Nothing in Particular

I was going to write about this video game I was playing and how it played to our lives. But I fell asleep thinking about that topic, so I decided to talk about the futureeeeee. The time we're in right now is one of turmoil. Gas prices, the environment, the Middle East, Europe, all of those things are nearing a point in time where their problems will be too great to repair. But we don't know when that is. Or what it's going to look like.

Do you remember that whole Rapture thing? When some pastor said that the Rapture, when good people ascend to heaven, would happen at a certain date at 6pm, people had mixed reactions. Most dismissed him as crazy, ignored him, or made fun of him. But a significant amount of people sold their possessions and toured the country proclaiming the date of the Rapture. All of their possessions. I was in the group of people who happened to respectfully disagree with the pastor's claims. But when 5:59 rolled around, I got slightly nervous.

Why? I was confident nothing was going to happen. But the point was that I didn't know. However sure I was, I just couldn't know. Just like all that shit that America and the world at large has to deal with. We just don't know what's going to happen. Weird thought. End of the world in 2012 is bullshit. But who the hell knows? We just can't know. It's hard to think about.
Alright, that's all. I'm going to go do something else now.

Libya and the Hunger Games

So I know that the percentage of people that are both following the situation in Libya and have read the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is quite small.

But has anyone noticed the weird similarities between the two? In the Hunger Games, the Capitol (Tripoli) is the rich center of Panem (Libya) while the rest of the Thirteen Districts (Benghazi, Misrata, etc) suffer in poverty and oppression by the Capitol's army. Eventually, a rebel uprising takes out the army forces in the districts one by one until they finally surround the Capitol (Tripoli).

The next part of the story is a fifteen year old girl unintentionally killing the dictator of the Capitol by shooting the rebel leader with a bow and arrow, so I don't know how that will play out in Libya. I'll be watching closely.

Invisible News!

30 rockets hit Israel today from Gaza! That's about a rocket every 48 minutes. But did it really happen?

Major news sites like CNN have nothing on their front page about the multiple rocket attacks, instead using headlines like "Hamas military calls for end of truce with Israel". Even Yahoo! News, with it's 58 million or so viewers, has nothing about the rocket attacks. But they do have "Egypt decides to withdraw ambassador from Israel".

Sounds like Israel is the bad guy here. But then again, if Mexico shot 30 rockets in one day into California, our headlines would probably be "Mexican ambassador withdraws from the US", right?

PS: Since when is Hamas a legitimate "military" and not a terrorist organization, which it is classified as by NATO, the EU, and the UN? Did I miss that memo? Hello?

The UN(-able to do anything)

Funny title, I know.


But seriously. Today Syrian President Assad officially ended "military operations" (CNN) in his country. Some accounts say that 250 people were killed since SUNDAY. Not Sunday in April. This Sunday four days ago. (Five days, it's getting past midnight). But thankfully we have the UN to help us...express alarm at the situation?


Yes, Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon made an important step from condemning actions in Syria to expressing alarm at "reports of human rights violations" (http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/08/17/syria.unrest/index.html).


I'm going to offer up a helping of really? Reports? C'mon, only all news stations (ranging from those in Israel to frickin' Al-Jazeera) have unanimously covered accounts from refugees from the country describing what was going on.


It's been like 3-4 months since the situation started. Darfur took place in 100 days. Step your game up Ban. How's about you actually do something?


Granted, there may be something actually concretely being done by the UN that I am too close-minded or too lazy to know/find out about. Let me know if that's the case. But still. Get it together.


The end of the rant.

Crunchy on the outside

First blog post ever!

I'm not sure what road I"m going to take with this thing, if any road at all.
Maybe it will be the Jewish road.
Or maybe the "right now I'm scratching my nose" constant blogging road.
Or the Rocky Road.

Stay tuned.