The Clinic

So I got to attend the two hour clinic that Petrucci held before the show. As John walked right by me to take the “stage” I immediately noticed that he’s built! He looks like he benches 300 lbs. In a rock world of drug-’n-alcohol-emaciated skank-males with wispy gangly limbs this is a welcome departure. John actually made several gym references and workout analogies during the clinic.

The next thing I noticed was that he really knew his music theory… (what did I expect?!) …which is what happens when you come out of Berklee and not your cousin’s garage. And he also spoke with authority, yet with a relaxed down-to-earth tone… like a police officer speaking at a school. It was great, and completely unexpected.

Needless to say the small performance illustrations he did during the clinic blew everyone away. This guy is insanely good. He is easily one of the top, top rock guitarists in the world. He covered a lot of ground in a short time, but here are some of them:

• Inversions – 1 note per string, 2 notes-per-string (with alternating finger assignments)
• Practicing – EVERY day… even if only for short periods, and getting in the habit of practicing through whole songs or sequences (as if playing live)
• Strength Exercises – 4 sets of 10 repetitions of tight, fast licks (just like working out)
• Endurance Exercises – Performing fretboard exercises like doing wind sprints (SPRINT JOG SPRINT JOG)
• Skill Exercises – Pure repetition of difficult phrases… over and over and over on top of one another
• Polish Exercises – Custom made repetition exercises to fine tune difficult phrases, hard to hit notes, and hard to form chord changes
• Sweep Picking – 2, 3, and 4-note sweeping (the right-hand tempo and consistency is the key)

And before I forget, Patty Womer needs to know that during the clinic he used the verb, “noodle”.

The Concert

This was my first concert at Albany’s Washington Avenue Armory… a cute little basketball arena that serves the purpose, I guess. We showed up in time to catch the last half of the third (and final) opening band (Opeth, who growled and gurgled a lot).

Once Dream Theater took the stage the place was electric. Despite the muddy sound mix (the low end really muddied both the vocals and the more treble-y moments) the band sounded other-worldly, each performing his craft to mind-numbing levels of accuracy and precision. At several points Petrucci has me just shaking my head… there was nothing else I could do but watch his effortless sweeps and runs (legato and alt-picked) up and down the neck. *sigh*

Here’s the setlist, compliments of Krazy Ken:

1. Constant Motion
2. Panic Attack
3. Strange Deja-Vu
4. Through My Words
5. Fatal Tragedy
6. Surrounded (extended)
7. The Dark Eternal Night
8. Take The Time
------------------------------------
9. Shmedley Wilcox:
      I.Trial Of Tears
      II. Finally Free
      III. Learning To Live
      IV. In The Name Of God
      V. Octavarium (Razor's Edge)

It was a great show. This was my first time seeing them. My only real complaint? They didn’t play Pull Me Under!? Holy smokes… how can you go to a Dream Theater show and not hear Pull Me Under? Oh well… just another reason to see them again.

Now, I don’t put much faith in the so-called Academy Awards – mostly because the “Academy” is elitist Hollywood lack-of-intelligencia who feed on their own self-stimulation. For Walk the Line, I think the attention it got was deserved, and I wish I had seen it long before now. The story felt sincere and was well screen-played.

However, the biggest plus was that these famous actors did their own music! Witherspoon and Phoenix earned MAJOR street cred with me by putting their musical chops to the test. They performed wonderfully and several of their performances can be found on the movie soundtrack.

By the way, when buying music tracks I have been thoroughly pleased with Amazon‘s newish MP3 service. It’s usually cheaper than iTunes… but most importantly, it’s DRM-free!

I think the movie is one of the best independent flicks I’ve seen. I watched it with my wife – we found it full of passion and sincerity. Particularly, it was refreshing to see professional musicians acting in lead roles with such engaging realism… probably so engaging precisely because they aren’t actors, and therefore their acting was much more believable, if that makes any sense.

Without giving anything away, the movie is about two amateur musicians each struggling in their own way. They by chance embark on a week-long musical collaboration that culminates with them recording their songs over a weekend. Throughout the movie each of them shares songs that find their way into the storyline (and ultimately onto their recorded CD).

Mere hours passed after watching Once before I bought the soundtrack… which was filled (pleasingly) with all the songs from the movie. For fellow musicians especially, I highly recommend this movie and its soundtrack.

From wikipedia…
Once is an Academy Award winning 2007 Irish musical film written and directed by John Carney. Set in Dublin, this naturalistic drama stars musicians Glen Hansard (of popular Irish rock band The Frames) and Markéta Irglová as struggling musicians. Collaborators prior to making the film, Hansard and/or Irglová composed and performed all but one of the original songs in the movie.

Shot for only €130,000 ($160,000), the film was very successful, earning substantial per-screen box office averages in the United States. It received extremely enthusiastic reviews and awards such as the 2008 Independent Spirit Award for best foreign film. Hansard and Irglová’s song “Falling Slowly” received a 2008 Academy Award and a 2008 Grammy nomination, and the soundtrack as a whole also received a Grammy nomination.

Of course, I shall not forget what this day really means (and I care not whether this is the EXACT day of Christ’s birth… for those who dwell on such things miss the whole point – and are a little slow of mind if I might add). I shall not forget how safe and sound I am on this day of epicurean materialism… thanks to the great freedoms that have become commonplace to the point of contempt. And let’s not forget the men and women in military uniform who sacrifice more in a week than most Westerners do in an entire decade, and who maintain our freedom.

So eat your eats, down your ‘nog, exchange your retail commodities, frolic with the family, slap any grinches (j/k… sorta), and have a very merry Christmas!

As always, the show was a mind-blowing hard-rockin’ Christmas spectacular. Alex Skolnick and Chris Caffery were monsters on their guitars. Vocals, strings, keys, lights, lasers, smoke, fog, fire, flame… everything was as good as any other year I’ve seen these guys.

One amusing note – the previous two years Chris Caffery plugged TSO’s “upcoming” non-Christmas CD release called Night Castle. But the CD still hasn’t been released (much the chagrin of hungry TSO fans like myself). This year, Chris both plugged and joked about the Night Castle release in what would be the quote of the evening:

Albany, let me ask you a question. What will be more likely to see in our lifetimes: a McDonalds on Mars, or the release of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Night Castle album?

They put on a great show. I was glad to go for the fifth year in a row. Next year I will go again. In a few months I’ll start looking forward to it.

I regularly read Worship Leader Magazine (WLM) and have always been a bit disappointed at the lack of articles on the importance of skill in worship music (an aspect that my worship hero Paul Baloche emphasizes in every one of his instructional videos). Not only importance… but if you read your Bible right – necessity.

I always thought WLM “intentionally” skimped on the “skill” thing merely because it was intuitively obvious… because it was considered a given in any serious worship circles. But recently, they did indeed include an article on skill in worship – amply titled “Play Skillfully” – which just might have revealed an alternate motive for their sparse coverage of skill in music… political correctness. You see, the author Mark Roberts openly admits in the article that pointing out the Bible’s call to skillful performance of worship may upset a lot of people. What? Why? It shouldn’t. Really, it shouldn’t.

When you are putting someone in a position (like in front of a church leading them in the worship of an all-powerful deity) you really should be using appropriate people. For leading worship music – appropriate people probably are those who have three things: some threshold of talent, the right attitude about the responsibility of leading others in worship, and spiritually a right heart. [for the non-churchy folk I apologize for not explaining the "right heart" thing here]

However, common sense applies always. Common sense tells us that kids in a church Christmas program (short of Joseph fist-fighting with the wise men) are afforded much leeway and may not have any of the three things listed above, and that’s okay. Common sense tells us that smaller churches need to play the cards they’re dealt, even if it’s just Queen high. And I’m sure everyone can think of real-life, sincere, and appropriate exemptions to my skill manifesto. But I do know that even the most modestly-skilled musicians and singers can work on their craft to pursue excellence. Indeed, the pursuit of excellence is sometimes more telling to me about worship music ministry than the act of already being excellent.

Anyways, to show my support of pro-skill articles I wrote a letter to the WLM editor voicing my approval, and as “always” my letter was delicate in a chiropractic sort of way.

Thank you for Dr. Mark Roberts’ article titled “Play Skillfully”. I found it quite refreshing to have some emphasis placed on this vital, yet seemingly ignored aspect of an excellent worship ministry. I’ve long felt that even enlightened worship resources like Worship Leader Magazine softball this issue too often.

Today’s churches, despite the modern infusion of quality worship music, seemingly regard “a servant’s heart” and “a humble walk” as the only true prerequisites for music ministry. This is simply wrong, un-Biblical, and could even be sinful if practiced negligently (whether intentionally or not). For the same reason that musical ability alone – without a desire for a Christ-likeness – would be insufficient for ministry, a lack of pursuit of musical excellence in a team member or worship leader, and an apathetic stance by church leadership, is a dereliction of our duty to worship the Lord as if he REALLY IS the creator of all things.

Now of course we have to use some common sense in application. Not all churches have the same selection of talent within their congregations – and in any team environment there are times when the “second-stringers” need to be put in the game to gain the skill and experience they need. But nothing changes the fact that pursuit of excellence in music ministry – or in any aspect of our worship – is part of the local church’s pursuit of Christ.

We wouldn’t settle for merely “a great prayer life” as qualification for a brain surgeon. We wouldn’t settle for just “a solid spiritual walk” as sufficient training for an electrician. So why compromise in our worship music ministry?

Right now, according to iTunes, my 17 most played songs are as follows (artist / track):

Hoobastank / Let It Out
Alanis Morissette / Crazy
Celtic Woman / She Moved Thru’ the Fair
Chris Cornell / You Know My Name
Train / Ordinary
Brandi Carlile / The Story
Damn Yankees / Coming of Age
Sunclub / Boomboom Good Time
Dokken / Walk Away
Alice Cooper / Disgraceland
Def Leppard / White Lightning
Dream Theater / Burning My Soul
James LaBrie / Pretender
Delerium / After All
Evanescence / Sweet Sacrifice
Dave Matthews Band / The Last Stop
Stryper / 10,000 Years

I could post an entire blog entry about almost every one of these songs… but we’ll save that for another time.

In the end I decided to wrap everything about me into one site. The design had to be bold and vivacious, yet clean and classy. Light on dark was a given. In the end, my nuclear engineering roots provided the inspiration for the design (hence the magenta trifoil and glowing green). I titled it, Nuclear Magic.

However, this new website not only serves as my personal site but was also a great proof-of-concept for using WordPress as a CMS. WordPress is widely regarded as the premiere blogging software… but its potential as a CMS is profound. So many web designers and developers already have WordPress blogs and are familiar with skinning and modding them… and the administrator interface is easy-to-use. Pound for pound you won’t get more bang for your buck when developing a dynamic website. WordPress works great, is free, and is easier to use for what it does than anything else I’ve ever even heard of.

Everything you see at SteveMooradian.com that is not part of the site’s physical design is dynamic. This is extremely significant. ALL images are called out in CSS or in MySQL… not the source files. All main textual content is stored in MySQL. On my Web Design, Programming, and Guitar & Music pages the lists of sites, projects, and bands (respectively) are all WordPress posts with categories matching the page title. The links at the bottom of every non-Home page are actual WordPress “Blogroll” links with categories matching the page title. Except for the Home and Gallery pages, each page is built from identical PHP code!

All my coding was done using Notepad++. All graphic work in the design was created by myself using Adobe’s Photoshop and Fireworks software. All markup is valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS3. All of the site conforms to 508 and WAI-A accessibility standards. All dynamic content is semantic. NO TABLES!

I designed the site using progressive enhancement so that I could be search-engine friendly and accessible while also providing a rich user experience to those with Flash and JavaScript-enabled browsers. Examples of progressive enhancement are as follows: I used sIFR to style my headings for users with Flash-enabled browsers. NO images were used for any headings on my site. I used swfIR to style most of my content images for users with Flash-enabled browsers. All drop-shadows and rounding on content images happen dynamically. I used GreyBox for all in-browser popups and image popup galleries for users with JavaScript-enabled browsers.

My new site has already been featured on many CSS and web design galleries… including a prestigious “Editor’s Pick” on the W3CSites.com gallery (which requires strict adherence to valid markup and web accessibility).

In terms of XHTML and CSS I had to rewrite some style to fix the layout of my theme. This custom-made theme I use employs very complex style markup and thus is very sensitive to change, and the upgrade to version 2.1 brought on some small syntax changes.

And then of course there was some PHP I had to rewrite… mostly because version 2.1 handles pages differently in the database schema.

And then I had to patch up my Jumps pages because version 2.1 totally handles link categories differently and also deprecated some primary link PHP functions.

Wow… I guess it was a lot of work now that I think about it.

WHAT :: Concert and CD release party for our new CD Blunder

WHEN :: Friday, November 3rd, 7:00pm

WHERE :: Grace Fellowship Coffehouse, ; Latham, NY – for directions go here or call 518.785.4595

WHY :: Because you love me and I play guitar in the band and write songs and you want to be part of the excitement and it’s the right thing to do and there’ll be free coffee and snacks.

HOW :: By all means possible!

This will be a great night of energetic music including originals, covers, and new arrangements of old favorites. I can guarantee you that we’ll rock, so don’t miss the show!

Release Party
7:30pm November 3, 2006
Grace Fellowship Coffehouse, Latham, NY
Free Admission – Free Coffee – Free Snacks

The music on the CD is sharp and heavily loop-based (perfect for casual listening), and Steve McClaine’s vocals are tight. We’ll be playing several live shows coming up (see my guitar dates on my homepage) but the date to remember most is November 3, the official release party. We’ll be playing a full two sets of music including almost all of the CD songs. Our live music is less electronic-based than the CD… it’s much more straight-ahead melodic rock (perfect for live shows).

If you’re anywhere near Albany, NY that day stop on in and say hey!

Ultimately I am going to add sounds and music (some of the things that make Flash sites stand out) and maybe even some video and such… we’ll see. But when you don’t hear from me just know that it’s because I’m totally geekin’ out.

And she’s using the apology letter against her own parents?! So now… not only are we not supposed to apologize to the old Asian woman in the Accord we rear-ended at 46mph in our Tacoma while winking at a cute passerby… but now we’re not even supposed to say we’re sorry to our own relatives!? And why? Because, as we see here, any apology these days is an admission not only of remorse, but of guilt, fault, and negligence. Music to a shister’s ears. The lawyers will use our own common courtesy against us all.

Here’s the AP story:

Daughter Who Surprised Mom With Birthday Visit Sues Parents

UPDATED: 3:17 pm EDT July 13, 2006
MADISON, Wis. — An Illinois woman is suing her Wisconsin parents for maintaining an icy driveway that she blamed for a fall that broke her ankle two winters ago.

This week, a federal judge refused to toss out the lawsuit, setting up a trial for November.

Carriel Louah, 25, visited Darlington, Wis., to surprise her mother on her birthday in January 2005. But the next morning, she was injured when she slipped and fell on her parents’ driveway. She filed suit against her parents earlier this year.

The daughter said that a letter from her mom apologizing months after the fall proves that her parents knew they had a defective gutter for years and did nothing about it.

She’s seeking more than $75,000 in damages for medical bills and lost wages.

Her parents said that she can’t prove the driveway was icy at the time or that their drainage system was faulty.

U.S. District Judge John Shabaz said that a jury should decide the matter.

Idiots… on marijuana.

Why? Because I want elected leaders who have policies that appeal to the movers… to the get-up-and-goers… to the put-the-potato-chips-down, turn-off-Oprah, and-let’s-go-vote-right-now-ers. I want votes cast by those with the most initiative… the most “genuine” concern about the outcome. I want the most civicly minded people to have all the say in who holds office. Because on the whole these people have some level of work ethic. The person who poops out on voting because it was raining (or because it was too much work to MapQuest the polling place… or because they didn’t feel like making the short phone call to find out their district) is NOT the person I want choosing a leader, because they’ll be more likely choose a laziness-enabler… some pervert in an ugly tie who’ll dole out handouts in exchange for slave votes. Yech!

It disturbs me when I see all these paid advertisements to try and “coax” people into voting. Whatever. Listen, either they care or they don’t. This ain’t American Idol and this ain’t supposed to be fun. It’s a duty… hence the phrase civic duty. You don’t do it because it’s entertaining or because some blowhard music artist tells you it’s kewl (and btw… that music artist… they ain’t votin’). You do it because it’s the right thing to do. Whining about being disenfranchised by the “boring parade of middle-aged bald men in ugly ties” only serves to reaffirm your immatury and lack of fitness to vote… and thus I am tickled that you don’t.

It also disturbs me that there are movements out there who want to make it easier to vote… by allowing registration in multiple locations and even suggesting that registering to vote be part of the required process for getting a driver’s license. That stinks because it’s poisoning the voting pool with those who don’t care… or who are borderline-too-lazy-to-vote… or who are only voting because a crackwhore with an acoustic guitar and a platinum-selling album spewed enough expletives about the incumbant. Making voting easier is worse than merely randomizing the results of the election… it’s active socialistic sabotage.

Of course, to be frank and balanced… I say it should NOT be harder for the elderly, infirmed, disabled, or military to vote. If anything this should be made easier (except for those tricky seniors in Florida who try to punch eight voting cards at once). But as a rule I want those who are physically able to vote to do so completely of their own accord… and walking over hot coals… uphill both ways… while being pelted with tennis balls.

Oh, last but not least… there should be a quiz! Easy quiz. Five questions (IN ENGLISH). Questions like… How many US States are there?… What is the national bird?… Where does the President live? And you’d only have to get three out of five questions correct for your vote to count. Seriously… if you can’t get three of five right then you truly do not possess the requisite knowledge required at a minimum to add any possible value to the outcome of the election… or to the direction of the country.

And if possible… maybe we could move election day to April 15?

So what is it about this book? First of all… this is not a highfalutin and boring diatribe on Christian blah blah blah. In fact, nowhere are the words highfalutin or diatribe used. But the book is written very well, and with a straight-forward no-nonsense manner that breathes honesty… and is injected with a poignant wit that can only come from sincerity. In effect, Mark Driscoll writes perfectly.

“Reaching Out Without Selling Out” is the tagline for this tome of relevancy. And indeed, being relevant (and theologically sound) is what makes modern missions effective (see my previous post on relevance). If ever there was an instruction manual on how to be a Christ-follower carrying out the great commission right where you are… surely this is it! Most of our present approaches to reach the world fail… and we need a radical change in how we share the truth to reach our post-Christian culture. That radical change is what Driscoll calls “reformission”.

We are all on a mission with Jesus everyday, and we are either good missionaries or bad.

I could write for days on the topics expressed in this book, but you’d assassinate me or my wife would leave me, so I’ll be pithy. Driscoll makes clear that effective churches need to have the message of Jesus (the gospel), a true gathering of believers, and hearts in tune with the culture they reside in. Missing any of these three creates a ministry that lacks a vital component of who Christ told us to be. The balanced blending of all three of these, built on the foundation of the Bible, is what being a reformission Christian is all about.

What most churches and Christians seem to have the problem with is “culture”. Reaching the world actually means you have to go in the world… and if you think that’s intuitively obvious you haven’t been to many churches lately. Most church leaders will pay out mad duckets to send someone to an unpronounceable wasteland thousands of miles away to spend years learning and embracing the language and culture and music. Yet these same “leaders” won’t learn the music of their own culture a mere one mile away. You can’t make this stuff up. Driscoll calls the Christians that ignore their own culture “traditionalists”.

…Traditionalism fails to distinguish between Biblical principles for ministry and cultural methods for implementing those principles. Traditionalism clings to dated ineffective methods in the name of staying truer to tradition than to Scripture. The result of traditionalism is a Christianity that has all of the right answers to all of the wrong questions…

I remember a good friend who was the Principal of a school in Michigan. He would watch the show Dawson’s Creek religiously. As adult male to adult male I would toss him the obligatory hardship for devoting his time to such a teeny-bopper diversion. But you know what he told me? When asked why he watches it he responded in a tone similar to someone answering a trivia question they already knew the answer to… “All my students are watching it.” That really stuck with me… that short sentence spoke volumes.

Reformission Christians and churches exist to perpetuate the gospel and should be swift to change their cultural forms if they are not the most beneficial for achieving that goal. This is what Paul told the Corinthians about being all things to all people and using all means to see as many people as possible saved (1 Cor. 9:19-23). Reformission churches have to continually examine and adjust their musical styles, websites, aesthetics, acoustics, programming, and just about everything but their Bible in an effort to effectively communicate the gospel to as many people as possible in the cultures around them.

At the end of each chapter in the book Driscoll includes an interview with a reformission Christian. These people span the full spectrum for sure… Hollywood insider, secular radio host, former exotic dancer turned office administrator, secular band manager, television broadcaster, pub & brewery owner and operator… and my favorite, the tattoo and piercing studio owner, operator, and artist (who also owns his own tattoo magazine).

The tattoo guy’s remarks showed more insight than a dozen Christian Sociologists could journal together in a week, and packed more truthful punch than a 100mph Gideons King James taken in the belly. When asked about his ministry…

[I'm] revealing the truth of the gospel to everyone I come in contact with, primarily people between eighteen and thirty-five, and many who are very unlikely to set foot in a traditional church setting.

[...]

I feel I was put in this particular profession for the purpose of reaching this postmodern generation with the truth of the gospel in the arena of a desperate, lost, and angry culture. My goal every day is not to target and convert anyone but to look for opportunities when I might be able to show Christ’s love to people who have never once been shown what the real message of the gospel is. What they have been told, and what they’ve seen themselves, are the lies of legalism masquerading as the gospel, and “quick to judge and condemn” Christians pointing their fingers at them.

[...]

From what I see in the Gospels, Jesus preached to a society from within the culture of his day, not from above it as the Pharisees did. In my opinion, the majority of churches today are more concerned with converting one cultural image into their own cultural image, with the implication that theirs is “Christian” (where no one drinks alcohol or listens to secular music and everyone dresses in business attire), while those cultures which differ from their view are not. Once again, this is definitely pharisaical. Unfortunately, I find this sums up the majority of the church world all too well.

Wow! How true is that!

Driscoll deftly crafts the path to reformission, and it involves breaking down several myths that have been injected by the enemy into churches over the years (and no, this does NOT involve the Da Vinci Code). The biggest myth to me was “culture equals worldliness”. The fact that Christians have regarded to two as synonyms has nearly killed reformission.

There are elements in every culture that could be used to oppose God and His work on the Earth but that are in and of themselves neutral and useable for either sin or worship. Examples include tasty food that could be used for either sinful gluttony or holy feasting, music that could be used for either idolatry or worship, and stylish clothing that could be used for either lust or beauty.

And of course, what book on being culturally relevant would be complete without a quick refresher on alcohol. Our feminism-driven romance with prohibitionism (alcohol is sin) and abstentionism (it’s not a sin but Christians should abstain) has sickeningly not only produced a couple generations of pussified church leaders, but has made them dangerously close to being liars. Indeed, the enemy has been using this lie to mislead an entire nation of believers. So, compliments of Mark Driscoll, let’s have a history lesson, shall we?

• Saint Gall was a missionary to the Celts and a renowned brewer
• After Charlemagne’s reign, the church became Europe’s exclusive brewer
• When a young woman was preparing for marriage, her church brewed a special bridal ale, from which we derive the word bridal
• Pastor John Calvin’s annual salary included upwards of 250 gallons of wine to be enjoyed by him and his guests
• Martin Luther once wrote of the Reformation, “While I sat still and drank beer with Philip and Amsdorf, God dealt the papacy a mighty blow.”
• Luther’s wife Catherine was a skilled brewer, and his love letters to her when they were apart lamented his inability to drink her beer
• When the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock, the first permanent structure they erected was a brewery

Most of those facts I did not previously know. Indeed I have cause to believe much Biblical truth on alcohol has been obscured from many a pulpit for many years. Some Methodist minister by the name of Welch invents grape juice in 1869 to replace communion wine and we’ve been suckling it ever since.

Thankfully, the resurgence of microbrewing in the United States is helping to overcome the great loss and to resurrect the art of brewing. I personally long for the return to the glory days of Christian pubs where God’s men gather to drink beer and talk theology.

Fortunately where I worship is inside a nightclub operated by (and right nextdoor to) Brown’s Brewing Company, a great local pub and microbrewery. But why does the alcohol thing matter? Driscoll explains this and much more in the book. I need to quit now or I’ll never stop… but maybe meet me for a Cherry Raspberry Ale at Brown’s and we can speak more on these things… as true Christians like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien would… over a beer.

Well I’m going to get a little bold and put a big Flash game on here. This one is 2.2MB which may be a bit much for those of you still chuggin’ away on a phone modem. But it’s worth it!

This game is called Floati’n Assault (don’t ask about the exotic contraction) and is a scrolling shooter with wonderful animations and a soundtrack that hints of Japanimé and 80′s-style arcade music. The creator is the same for last Friday’s game, Brain Force… some Japanese guy by the name of Uminin. You’d think he’d have more than a Geocities website, wouldn’t you?

For those of you who like to start clicking in maniac fashion without the burden of instructions… Z fires, X shields, and C fires something else.

Speaking of… and not to be too trite of a follow up… that is just one of many situations that we, as mere humans, really don’t understand the magnitude of until we are actually present to experience it. I was just talking about this today with someone. There are certain circumstances that people tell us about… that we read about in newspapers or see on the news… that we can try and imagine, but our imaginations fall terribly short of the emotional and physical effects that real-world situations cast on us. For instance, While I was stationed at Fort Drum I was told about a place just off post, called the Golden Unicorn (I know… sounds like a gay bar), that served HUGE pancakes. Well, until you get served two pancakes that are each the size of early laptop computers you really cannot comprehend what 2500 calories of fried beer batter looks like…. you just can’t. I tried to google for a Golden Unicorn website but the best I could get were hits for 10th Mountain soldiers making breakfast plans on their MySpace pages.

Speaking of MySpace… what a parade of human debris that can be. Now, don’t get on me about devaluing human beings… I know that I’m not any more valuable than anyone else… but I can’t help but notice that what started out as a website for indie music bands to have a so-called homepage has now become a haven for teenage (and pre-teen) debauchery where little girls will post pictures of themselves in underwear to get the attention of pimpled-faced, testosterone-charged punks. Both aforementioned groups can’t seem to construct complete sentences with proper spelling and grammar (thank you IM) any more than your eldest relative can explain the impact of Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript And XMLhttpRequest) on modern web development. And really… have you seen the pictures on there? Forget the dirty stuff… what goes through someone’s mind when they post the same shot of themselves five times and give each shot a totally different caption? It’s like deja-Zoolander all over again.

I think I need a hug.

Did I also mention that I have no idea what I want to do when I grow up? I may start doing some more flash development… which might mean I’d only be posting here every other day (about).

I’m also getting busy musically… as I’m in essentially three active bands right now. I look at my schedule (on my Dell Axim, of course) and it’s riddled with rehearsals and gigs of all manner.

And then people check out my blog and ask me how the heck I have time for all of this stuff?

Good question.