The end of Random Thoughts

this blog is officially being renounced in favor of my new blog, which I hope I will use with more frequency and more topically than this one: thepeacenik.wordpress.com

Kandinsky Trio in action

yup. this is my dad and his trio, with a cover of Blinding Me With Science, by Thomas Dolby. They do cool things for encores sometimes. Haven't posted anything in a long time, because i'm a boring person.

I are serious cat. this is serious thread.

so... i'm pretty sure i'm the only person on the whole interwebs that understands the words "invisible bike", knows html +css +javascript, and runs linux at least part of the time that still has a dial-up connection. This bothers me. But whatever. since my last post, i've been busy doing as little as possible. I saw Donnie Darko at a friend's house. I think it was an amazing movie, but I'm not entirely sure, because I couldn't really hear half of it. Other than that, i haven't done anything productive except buy school stuff. so i think i should post something, but i have absolutely no idea what it is. hmmmm.... what have I recently seen that's semi-interesting? stuff at lifehacker.... wikipedia's featured article is on indonesia.... that's sort of interesting... and you can make your own shoes at converse.com. i think that's it. holy crap i lead a boring life.

Lest I Forget...

...This is my list of things to do before I die. This idea is shamelessly thiefed from my friend Wyatt, here. but I find it justifiable because he stole my number one, which i told him a while ago. He did, however forget the reasons, which i will asplain:

Number Five:
Bike across Europe. It can't be beautiful forever, especially with the modern disassociation with art and the constant lack of scruples when it comes to bombing historic and significant areas/buildings/cities.

Number Four:
spend two weeks in the wilderness alone, or with a select group of friends. Minimal contact with anyone else, or what's the point? I'm talking serious preparation, probably a kayaking/canoing trip on the amazon or something like that. Of course we'd have to buy supplies every few days along the way, but mainly just alone.

Number Three:
Be a member of a revolution. Or start one. Just as long as it has better and longer lasting consequences than the Russian Revolution. Something that actually helps people permanently. It might be to invent something, it might be to write a book, it might be to create a religion. Ever read the book cat's cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut? it's a great book. Being like Bokonon would be the most amazing thing ever.

Number Two:
Come up with something that achieves semi-major attention. this is difficult for me, because i don't naturally seek attention at all. I'm naturally shy and out of the way. I want to, just one time and certainly no more, have a little bit of the spotlight. Mostly to prove to myself that I really wouldn't like it.

Numero Uno, a.k.a. the big cheese, a.k.a. number one, a.k.a. my only significant mark on the earth:
Die.























By jumping out of a plane without a parachute.


"WHAT???? That's totally the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It really is."

no, it's not, and here's why:
first of all, this is when i'm 80-something or 90-something and in poor health. so i'd be dying soon anyway. second, think about it: either your last sensation would be of falling, almost forever and for the last time, or it would be of every bone in your body breaking. And no one will ever know for sure, at least not until they're dead. If it's the first option, that would be pure ecstasy. if it's the second, it would be proof that you were the most amazing person ever.

list of 100 best songs of all time

ok, here's how this works: i post a list of my favorite songs of all time, and you tell me in the comments why my taste sucks. ok? ok. only sort of in order:

1. Woodstock- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young


2. Riders On The Storm- The Doors


3. Louie Louie- The Kingsmen


4. Hello Operator- The White Stripes


5. Sweet Jane- The Velvet Underground


6. Welcome To The Machine- Pink Floyd


7. Happiness Is A Warm Gun- The Beatles


8. Just What I Needed- The Cars


9. Paint It Black- The Rolling Stones


10. Into The Mystic- Van Morrison


11. My Generation- The Who


12. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised- Gil Scott-Heron


13. Conquistadore Rides Again- Santana


14. Are You Gonna Be My Girl- Jet


15. Breaking The Girl- Red Hot Chili Peppers


16. Heart In A Cage- The Strokes


17. Jumble, Jumble- The White Stripes


18. Where Is My Mind?- Pixies


19. Once In A Lifetime- Talking Heads


20. Smells Like Teen Spirit- Nirvana


21. Rebel Rebel- David Bowie


22. Sympathy For The Devil- The Rolling Stones


23. Hey Joe- Jimi Hendrix


24. I Can’t Explain- The Who


25. Bone Machine- Pixies


26. You Really Got Me- The Kinks


27. Harold Land- Yes


28. Maps- Yeah Yeah Yeahs


29. Dear Prudence- The Beatles


30. Karma Police- Radiohead


31. Get Yourself High- The Chemical Brothers


32. Incinerate- Sonic Youth


33. Run Like Hell- Pink Floyd


34. The Air Near My Fingers- The White STripes


35. All Along The Watchtower- Jimi Hendrix


36. Walk Idiot Walk- The Hives


37. Teen Age Riot- Sonic Youth


38. Bohemian Rhapsody- Queen


39. Gone Daddy Gone- Gnarls Barkley


40. Y Control- Yeah Yeah Yeahs


41. Here Comes The Sun- The Beatles


42. Suffragette City- David Bowie


43. Won’t Get Fooled Again- The Who


44. Whip It- Devo


45. Ana Ng- They Might Be Giants


46. Train In Vain- The Clash


47. Lady Madonna- The Beatles


48. I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor- Arctic Monkeys


49. B.O.B.- Outkast


50. Psycho Killer- Talking Heads


51. Here Comes Your Man- Pixies


52. Who’s Yehoodi?- Cab Calloway


53. Blitzkrieg Bop- The Ramones


54. Soma- The Strokes


55. Blackbird- The Beatles


56. And She Was- Talking Heads


57. Positively Fourth Street- Bob Dylan


58. My Best Friend’s Girl- The Cars


59. Mr. Brightside- The Killers


60. We’re Not Gonna Take It- Twisted Sister


61. Dream On- Aerosmith
    
62. Ballroom Blitz- Sweet


63. Under Pressure- David Bowie & Queen


64. London Calling- The Clash


65. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is- Jet


66. Ever Fallen In Love?- The Buzzcocks


67. Give Peace A Chance- John Lennon


68. Superstition Stevie Wonder


69. I’m Not Down- The Clash


70. Hate To Say I Told You So- The Hives


71. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction- The Rolling Stones


72. Clampdown- The Clash


73. Debaser- Pixies


74. She Blinded Me With Science- Thomas Dolby


75. Hey Now, Hey Now- Cab Calloway


76. Death Or Glory- The Clash


77. What I Like About You- The Romantics


78. Roadrunner- Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers


79. Gigantic- Pixies


80. Fire- Jimi Hendrix


81. Roxanne- The Police


82. Crazy Train- Ozzy Osbourne


83. Communication Breakdown- Led Zeppelin


84. Lost In The Supermarket- The Clash


85. Beautiful Day- U2


86. A Quick One, While He’s Away- The Who


87. Seven Nation Army- The White Stripes


88. Bad Reputation- Joan Jett


89. Walk Like An Egyptian- The Bangles


90. Back In Black- AC/DC


91. Immigrant Song- Led Zeppelin


92. Pride (In The Name Of Love)- U2


93. Born In the USA- Bruce Springsteen


94. Nearly Lost You- Screaming Trees


95. Mr. Tambourine Man- Bob Dylan


96. I Wanna Be Sedated- Fight The Power


97. Fight The Power- Public Enemy


98. Heroes- David Bowie


99. I Melt With You- Modern English


100. All Alone- Gorillaz

So.... nice weather we're having!

i'm only posting because i'm at the beach and i got really into my blog a year ago when i was at the beach so i think i owe it to my past self to blog now. I don't really have anything to say, except that i've discovered that priests are proof that the human race will go extinct. Humans developed into the "dominant" race on earth because we evolved to have "more intelligence" than other animals. apparently, as in the book Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut, our big brains create too much interference among all those tiny circuits to continue our obvious darwinian goal, which is to reproduce. Priests and those who choose to remain chaste are deciding to be, from a darwinian standpoint, completely useless in the continuation of the human race. if the first men had to be efficient, one would think that any genes that coded for lack of sexual drive would have been killed off pretty early on. but apparently we, no longer using our intellect solely for food, have created positions in which continuation of the human race is not the main concern. as computers such as the one i am typing on now grow in power, they will eventually be able to contol the planet by themselves. This will allow more and more people to die without reproducing, and when aliens find our planet trillions of years from now, they will find robots, whether still operational or not, and no humans and possibly no animals. they will be very confused if the robots are still running.

theonion.com

FBI Learns OF Plot To Download Old School

^^This article is why i love The Onion.  I don't really feel like i deserve to read things this funny. It's totally true, too. There is absolutely no point in any of the laws against downloading music or videos. 3 cents is not worth the amount of trouble it takes to arrest or prosecute someone who steals a movie. I'm not saying that it's a good thing to steal, or to download things illegally, I'm just saying that it's pointless to try and stop it. it's like trying to cover up the sky.

sipping coke

So here I sit
In my aeroplane
Drinking, sipping


While somewhere in the dark
A man dies of AIDS
A woman is raped


And what do I care?
I’m 3000 miles above
Above them all


Drinking, sipping


An addict is run over in the streets of New York
By a hummer
But I don’t drive a hummer


I’m 3000 miles above it all
And so is the captain
The flight attendants


You
And me
And them


But not…
Them.
The tired, the poor, the huddled masses


Not ours.
We can’t support that number of people
A child starves in Mexico, Iraq, Sudan, The Phillipines, and never makes a sound


He knows that we’re all too far to hear him
3000 miles.


Sipping, drinking, sipping coke.

I love summer...

...mostly. My legs hurt. A lot. and by a lot I mean just about as close to 2nd degree burns you can get from the sun. I even used sunscreen.

Anyway, they got like that because I was just on a Boy Scout trip on the New River. I was in a canoe with Adam the first day, and a kayak the second. I really like these trips, because you can carry as much as you want, really, but moreso this trip: we were camping at a real campsite (not like the island from last year), and we drove the cars with all our gear over to it. So really we didn't have to worry about swamping because most people were only carrying snacks and water and sunscreen. It was essentially two perfect days for canoeing, about 75 degrees (F), dry and breezy. so basically it was the perfect trip. I only wish it was longer. All the canoing zen masters of the troop (except for Phil Pickett whose grandmother died the day before) were on the trip, so it was really fun. Not the best trip ever, because the campsite was surrounded by the tracks of a train that went by every fifteen minutes all through the night, but still pretty awesome. Never having been to the campsite (which had almost no trees), i packed my hammock instead of a tent. This was also fairly annoying. But in general, a really good trip.

other than that trip, I haven't really done anything this summer. ooo, forgot: My cell phone was almost killed in the wash yesterday. it still turns on, but only when it's plugged in to the charger. I think this means there's a water-induced short somewhere in the power, because it hasn't dried out yet. At least I hope so, because a cell phone you can't use except in your room is very nearly pointless.

It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
and I feel fine.

SCHOOOOL'S OUT/ FOR SUMMER!

Wow. It's been a really long time since I've posted, hasn't it? like 2 months. The last three weeks of it were because my computer was dead, or in the shop, or something like that. Well, I'm sort of glad for that anyway, because i became re-obsessed with photography over this break from the computer. I uploaded the best pictures i've ever taken to my flickr. you can see it by clicking on the image above.

So what else has happened since my last post? Well, for starters, it's SUMMER :) !!!! so far, though i've realized that the fact that i only had to take two exams at the end of school made me not sure when to be really excited, and this caused me to be less excited overall. So that's not fun. but also, i think i got some good grades: B in drafting (that's a 4.0), A in Latin, A in history, A-B in Algebra (depends on my exam grade), A in Biology, A-B in Enlish, and A in gym. so yeah, that's all that's going on that's interesting in my life right now...

Harold Land/With a wave of his hand/said goodbye to all that

this doesn't actually happen in real life, does it?

I watched with glee

While your kings and queens

Fought for ten decades

For the gods they made

I shouted out,

Who killed the kennedys?

When after all

It was you and me

I've been in shock the past two days. Stuff just doesn't happen here. It doesn't happen anywhere, really, does it? You mean the stuff on television happens to real people? like, people with lives and jobs and families? <-- my thought process, courtesy of my brain. So unless you don't have a tv or a computer, which wouldn't make sense, since you're reading this, you probably know what happened here on monday. This disturbed korean senior killed 32 people +himself. so this makes the second murder here in one year. Not to mention the largest single mass murder in U.S. history. There have been a total of "0" murders here ever. It's not a real place anymore. it's one of those nice, small towns that produce serial killers that you see on "america's most wanted." This is not cool. not fun. not comfortable. It's RIGHT HERE. Everything's shattered in our brains. my parents knew the german teacher.

Powered by Bleezer

Whoops...

Can't you see I'm trying?
I don't even like it. I just lied to
Get to your apartment, now I'm staying
Here just for a while
I can't think 'cause I'm just way too tired

Is this it?
Is this it?
Is this... it?

i freaking love the strokes.

Anyway, i made a comment yesterday that i regret extremely, but that was actually really sarcastic and not meant to offend anyone. Mr. Reinhardt asked the class why the Christians felt, during the crusades, that they needed to control Jerusalem. Everyone answered. He then asked why the Muslims did. No one answered. So to break the overwhelming silence and mock America's view of Muslims, I said, my voice oozing sarcasm (or so i thought), "because Muslims suck." Of course, Mr. Reinhardt and everyone else in the room understood that i was not serious. however, the administrator who just happened to be giving Mr. Reinhardt his teacher evaluation that day did not realize this. I got called to the office today. I'm not saying that I am not at fault, only that I really did not think i was saying anything offensive at the time. Well, that's not completely true. I knew, of course, that "Muslims suck" would be a terrible thing to say if one was in fact of that conviction. I just didn't think that anyone would believe that I actually thought that it was true.

day before easter

today we were supposed to go on a bike trip on the New River Trail with the scouts, but it didn't work out because.... drum roll please... it was snowing! yeah. halfway through April, it's snowing. so that was disappointing. but now i get to stay home and do nothing, which is good! i think...

tomorrow's easter! this is the first year we haven't dyed eggs. i'm not sure if that's symbolic of something or just because we didn't feel like it. the dye didn't smell good, and your hands weren't the same for a week. I like easter, because it's not about the presents and is therefore less commercialized than christmas. holidays should be about what they represent, not about how much money the CEOs make during them.

can't you see i'm trying
i don't even like it
i'd just like to get to your apartment
now i'm staying
there just for a while
i can't think 'cause
i'm just way too tired.
<--the strokes (is this it>

first day of spring break!

so, yeah. today was our early release for the first day of high-school break. it was really fun, at least at first. above is a picture of jessica about to fall on leah's face out of a big tree on the duck pond.

So it was fun. until we went to squires. Leah was drawing on my shoes, with her gigantic bag of sharpees, when a policeman walks over and begins to tell us about how graffiti destroys the university. He said they were cracking down on taggers and that he would need all of our info. we had done nothing remotely destructive to property today, or any other day for that matter. so yeah, after that, we were free to leave. but it still freaked me out that because we "fit a profile," we were accountable for our age-group's sins. he came up to us and his first words were "are you all the kind of kids who ride skateboards and tag buildings?" like they went hand in hand. they don't. and we aren't.

"listen, son
said the man with a gun
there's room for you inside

yet again, it's been a while since my last post. i think i'm finally getting rid of my computer habit. whether that's good or bad, i don't know. I did get a new camera because my old one, which i had for 2 1/2 years, broke. it's april fools day, but i didn't come up with any stupid pranks to play on people, mainly because it's a sunday, and therefore i won't see anyone today. I don't know why i felt like posting today, because i really don't have much to say.

Well, my new camera is very cool. it has 6x optical zoom, 24x digital, which is like 3 times better than my last one. it has the best macro function EVER, and you can set the focal distance, aperture, shutter speed, iso, and anything else you could possibly want. it takes VGA quality video, but on my 512 mb card it can only take 4.5 mins. anyway, i love it soo much, and will be frequently posting new photos on flickr, if not here.

"Who says a funk band can't play rock?" --Funkadelic

ummm...
yeah... I don't have any sort of thing I really wanted to post... just felt like letting everyone know i'm not dead. I watched "Wild Hogs" yesterday. the preview was pretty accurate as far as the level of humor goes. But considering the idiotic premise and puerile sense of humor, it really wasn't so bad. The feeling seemed to really fit the topic. I rank it as the best terrible movie i've seen recently.

busy week

hey. sorry it's been a while since i posted. I have put a semi-ban on the internet for myself. It's been a fairly eventful week. First, last weekend, my computer basically broke down and wouldn't conect to the internet. so i had to back up everything, reinstall windows, and restore all my files. This weekend, we took down my loft bed because i was getting really sick of having to climb down every time i was thirsty. This ended up making my room look a lot better, in my opinion. Finally, my computer's monitor started glazing over frequently. I think there's a bad connection because closing and reopening it makes a difference. I set it up so that it's connected to an old monitor that i have laying around, and it stopped, so it's not a problem with the graphics card.

Cold Weather

It's been very cold here the past few weeks. This is a shot of a branch outside our house. I realized after taking it that you can't tell that it was attached to the tree, and it sort of looks like I was holding it there. I wasn't, it was still attached to the tree. Anyway, whether by popular demand or my own desires, i changed the template. I didn't get any negative feedback, only three people who thought it was better. I also like it better, because it is brighter. I'm not really a dark person. I'm not sure i like the intensity of the blue, but it certainly is better than the black. this is likely the last time i'll change the template for a while, unless someone would like a change in sidebar-size or color or similar. Well, i guess that's it for today!

Valentines Day

Happy Valentine's day, everybody! Yeah. I ate a whole box of chocolate today. I was planning to give someone a valentine, but we didn't have school today because of ice (ummmm, sort of), and my plans were foiled. The upsides were, of course, we didn't have to go to school and i got to sleep until 1:00 P.M. (not joking about this, either).

2-3 things (depending on whether i remember the third thing)

Hey. You may have noticed, although probably not, that in the sidebar there is a link to a flickr site. it is mine, and if you are viewing this in some medium other than the regular blogspot page, the link points to http://flickr.com/photos/spiritfox. The second thing is, that i have created, half by accident, a new layout for my blog, but unless people like it more, i don't want to go to the trouble of changing it. the new template can be found here: http://spiritfox12.googlepages.com/index.html (yes, the "index.html" is actually neccessary because of the way google pages works.) If i were to change the template, the sidebar would include the section about what i'm reading, my albums of the week, etc.
and the third thing..... uuuhhhh....


Oh yeah. from now on, i will try to post once a week, each post with the best photo I've taken that week. Partially because a.I have recently noticed that most of the thousands of pictures i've taken are crap, and b. I want to have something to blog about that isn't really boring. a is based on the expression "practice makes perfect."