PaulSaysThings

Bands I've Seen Live/Bands I have signed

2010-11-05T09:44:00.002-05:00

This is only being posted so I can move it onto my new computer b/c it wont read the original word file but feel free to look through it anyway

----BANDS IVE SEEN LIVE (if ive seen them more than once it will be in parenthesis) ~= ive met them, *= i have something signed by them : Madina Lake, Smile Empty Soul, Operator, The Exies, Say Anything(3~*), Flyleaf(2), Bullet For My Valentine(2), Papa Roach, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Wolfmother, The Killers, Trivium, Hellyeah, Atreyu(2~*), Evanescence, Korn, Sick Puppies(2), Evansblue, The Starting Line, Hurt(2), Saliva, Mute Math, Sum 41, Chevelle, Seether(2), Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, Last Fast Action, The Feed, Ludo(5~*), Lucabrasi, Safetysuit, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Red, Theory of a Deadman, 10 Years(2), Coheed and Cambria(~*), Filter, Killswitch Engage, Shinedown(2*), Serj Tankian, The Birthday Massacre(I met the guitarist, Rainbow, and he signed my shirt), Mindless Self Indulgence (~*), 36 Crazyfists, Suicide Silence (2), Five Finger Death Punch, Black Tide(2~*), DJ Starscream, Airbourne, The Red Chord, Walls of Jericho, underOATH (~*), Machine Head, Mastodon, Dragonforce, Disturbed, Slipknot, The Boxmasters (Billy Bob Thorton's band-seen them acoustic met Billy Bob and had him sign my Mr. Woodcock DVD) Armor For Sleep, Hawthorne Heights (~*), Street Drum Corps, Ashes Divide, The Bravery, Chris Cornell, Linkin Park, The Chaotics(2~), Drive A, Ava, Wait, Red Line Chemistry, Miser, Brookroyal, Copperview, Saving Abel, Local H, Story of the Year, Apocalyptica, Puddle of Mudd, Oh My God, Building Rome, Family Force 5 (*~), Central City Heroes(~), Professor Hooknose and his Greasy Gits, Justin Finch-Fletchley (2*~), The Whomping Willows (2*~), The Moaning Myrtles (*~) Lauren Fairweather (2*~) Nina Jancowicz(*~), River Boat Gamblers, Rancid, Rise Against, The Expendables, Ziggy Marley, 311, Arcanium, Warbringer, Megadeth, Houses of The Holy(4), Steve Ewing Band (~), Angels & Airwaves, Gaza, Cattle Decapitation, Whitechapel, Job For A Cowboy, ____local band before TBDM, Arcaic, Goatwhore, The Black Dahlia Murder, Valencia, Saves The Day, Motion City Soundtrack, Armoured Bearcub (*~), Alex Carpenter [of The Remus Lupins] (*~), Lamb Of God(~* havnt seen them live though), From First To Last (* havnt seen them live) As I Lay Dying (* havnt seen them live)

Second Annual NaNoWriMo Procrastination

2010-11-01T16:33:00.002-05:00

I am not doing NaNo again this year because I am a horrible person.

Last year was when I first found out about NaNoWriMo about 2 weeks before it actually happened and so I was a big wuss and like OH NO I'M NOT PREPARED I CAN'T DO IT. But I did tell myself that I would spend the whole year planning a rough idea of a plot and then I could do NaNo the next time.

It's the next time and I can't do it.

When I made the claim that I was going to do NaNo in 2010 I had not expected that the life as I knew for 20 years would change and that I would be going to a big fancy regular college and working and actually having a set schedule to live by. I've just been put into this schedule and I don't have a grasp on time management yet.

So my reasons are more legit than last year. I work 5 days a week on top of school plus I have my theater tech class that requires 36+ hours of outside school work so essentially I am working every day. Most of my "free time", that is not working, not being at school, not doing homework, and not doing anything essentially, is spent between the hours of 7:30-11:10 pm. Last year I had also not planned on reading 50 books in a year but after realizing I could do it I started that this year.

If I were not reading 50 books in a year I would more than likely be doing NaNo this year.

BUT OH WELL!

So what I AM going to do is write stuff ANYWAY because NaNo is about writing in general rather than writing to a certain point. I'm not going to keep track or anything I'm just going to gather writing "skills" and confidence. I DO enjoy writing. At least in the form of typing. I just like the feeling and sounds associated with typing really fast and putting thoughts in print as they come to you. (i hate writing by hand because I always get cramps in my hand)

So here are things that I am going to give up for 30 days November 2011:

Recreational Reading (meaning not for school)
A decent amount of internet use. Can't give it ALL up but I can cut back.
Whatever social life I happen to have at the time. I will probably go out at least once in the month to relieve the tension or whatever, though.
Becoming intoxicated. If all things go to plan then I will not have problems with this in the FIRST place by next year.
Playing guitar. It's going to SUCK but I spend lots of free time doing it.
Doing stuff with people from work. It seems that I am hanging with them more and more so I will need to cut back come next year.
And the most important thing I will not do for 30 days next November is I WILL NOT PROCRASTINATE ABOUT NANOWRIMO!!!!

I like structure so I'm going to have to plan things out like this so I am comfortable getting myself into this situation. I plan on getting the No Plot? No Problem! book from the NaNo website store. (As i'm thinking about it I should probably get in the habit of using correct punctuation and capitalization when writing "formal" things, like blogs for starters). I had some notes written out last November when I had started planning this year's novel but I'm probably going to scrap them because I generally do not like something I have created after it has existed for a while. This is going to be hard for me but I need this, in a way. I have probably never done anything for 30 days straight other than becoming intoxicated and reading Infinite Jest. I have already embraced that NaNoWriMo is a great thing and I really am jealous I can't find the time to do it this year. But I'm going to do what I CAN. And what I CAN do is attempt to do more than nothing.

Culture Shock (best day ever)

2010-09-20T19:42:00.002-05:00

I'm going to use the phrase culture shock in a new context here. The culture shock I had today was when I was being IRL today and things from URL existed IRL.

I get into a lot of cool things through internet people and my internet friends and internet stuff etc.

So today I went to the loop which is like (at least I like to think so) the cultural mecca of st. louis. Its a really cool street full of coffee shops and art galleries and book stores and TONS of music stores and mostly restaurants (many of which are foreign foods).

Today was my best trip to the loop.

So we get there via metro link because I have a free pass for the semester and a guy that's raising funds for a thing comes up to us and gave us a handful of 45's (which are small black disks that play music on a thing called a record player which uses a needle to make sound INORITE?!) I have not listened to them yet but i'm excited i have them regardless.

We go to get say anything tickets and they wanted to charge me extra since i was using a debit card so i didnt get them and i'm gonna get them with cash later this week.

Then we go to eat at chipotle.

I found out about chipotle through internet people (Hayley G Hoover etc) and i've been wanting to go there for like a year. So i ate there and it was amazing

Then we went to FroYo which is a very awesome frozen yogurt place and it was beyond delicious and amazing.

We went to the comic book store and they had all this scott pilgrim stuff and I was excited (i got into scott pilgrim through internet people) and they had other cool stuff and i was very excited they also had doctor who comics and i was like WHAA!

So then we go to the music store and its like my favorite store EVER and in the back they have paintings by this famous guy who paints album covers and stuff and they had 4 neutral milk hotel paintings (i got into NMH through internet people) and I looked and saw these paintings and i just went "WHAAAAAAAAAAA!" and ran over to them and I was flailing my arms and stuff and I was so excited. (also I bought the new ludo album there)

Skipping ahead a bit when I got home I decided I should have bought the painting after finding out that it was that famous guy and so i called the place and they're holding it for me.

So then we went to the indie bookstore.

They. Had. EVERYTHING!

Every David Foster Wallace book
Every Chuck Palahniuk Book
Every Kurt Vonneguy Book
Tons of books about internet stuff like "shit my dad says", "texts from last night" and stuff and a funny book about making bongs out of random objects.
They had almost the whole set of 33 1/3 books including the one written by John Darnielle of the mountain goats.

So basically I just found a bunch of reallly cool things that excited me and it was the best trip ever.

BEDA 23- First Day of School

2010-08-23T19:50:00.002-05:00

My first day this semester was even more chaotic than the last.

So I came to UMSL in the spring last time. I've never been there during the start of the year in the fall. THERE ARE SO MANY MORE PEOPLE THERE! Parking was 100x worse than I was expecting.

I get to my class on the top floor of the farthest building and sit through that horrible moment where you're not 100% sure you're in the right room. One other guy walks out muttering something about the wrong day. I suddenly see the textbook on the teacher's desk and i'm like ok i'm in the right place.

5 minutes before class starts the teacher goes- ok so this class is intro to astronomy and you need a college algebra and trig pre-requisite. if you're not confident in your abilities to do the math required for this course there is another class with no math that is going on RIGHT NOW. Here's the syllabus for it and the room number.

HALF THE CLASS (including me) GETS UP AND LEAVES.

We all pile into the other lecture hall and confuse the hell out of the teacher.

So 15 minutes into that class I realize that this new class may not fit into my degree requirements. So i freak out and can't pay attention the whole period.

We get out early and I go to the office to check everything. Theres a girl up there with some police because she was yelling at the lady behind the desk. I get sent to another office where they print off a thing. I check the thing and scream (not literally) relief because the class DOES fill the requirement. So the class I WAS in was 1050. The class I switched to is 1001. (hint: higher numbers means harder class). I was in the wrong class to BEGIN with. It was NOT the intro course. My adviser put me in the wrong class because of how it was listed on the sheet. Its difficult to understand but I see how he made the mistake.

Anyway i'm so excited this is all going to work out. I go back to the first office and fill out a form and she tells me that it wont fit because there is a lab that conflicts with one of my other classes. Then she rattles off other classes that all conflict with work. Then she goes, oh no wait that lab is optional you CAN take that class.

Then my second class I walk in and see the guy next to me with the textbook so i'm in the right place. The teacher (who is hot btw) says "this is intro to advertising blah blah blah... and I just want to say.....

WAZAUUUPPPP?!"

and half the class stood up and said

"WAZAUUUPPP?!"

and the second half of the class is like wtf is going on. And the teacher says those who stood up read what she put online for the class and have passed the first assignment.

wow

So my advertising teacher is really animated and uses cool examples of stuff and the class is gonna be awesome.

Then I had work and it was ok but busy.

Tomorrow should go much smoother.

Reading: read some oblivion today. the story i'm on is the greatest.
I havent even listened to music yet today

BEDA 22- The "Real" College Experience

2010-08-22T22:48:00.002-05:00

I just got back from hanging out with my little brother's girlfriend at her dorm. She's going to the same school as me WHICH STARTS TOMORROW OMG IM SO NOT READY! But anyway I told her to find all the cool people since she's living there and she's pretty picky with people so I was sure she'd find really cool people.

So I have never been on the south part of campus before so that was cool. And i've never seen the resident halls let alone ever been in one before so it was all an overwhelming experience. Like I thought I knew about it but I had NO IDEA.

My brother had to leave because he didn't have his ID and they wouldn't let him stay without it so It was just me, my bro's gf, and then she called up some people and we hung out.

We talked about harry potter on a level that only someone truly devoted can, and I couldn't believe it was a conversation that was NOT over the internet.

My bro's gf knows so much about what is going on at school that it's kind of scary. Last semester I was there I did my best to be completely unattached to school at all. I just distanced myself from it on purpose.

Tonight made me feel completely different. It was kinda weird to me but it was also exciting. I've decided that I'm going to be more involved this semester because my bro's gf is a way to comfortably ease my way into "real" college life.

There still some more people i'm supposed to meet soon so that will be cool.

First day is tomorrow. 2 classes. I'll be there from 11-2. I have not packed my bookbag yet. I only have 15 minutes in between class so I was gonna get snack stuff to eat but I didn't get any. I am the most unprepared for school I have ever been in my life. Oh well

reading-gonna go now

Last song scrobbled: something by dream theater idk what it was

BEDA 22- Science Be Praised!

2010-08-21T21:35:00.002-05:00

Science is some legit stuff. There's nearly a full moon out and it's caused everyone to be crazy today. This literally happens.

I woke up feeling like shit (which i later/before i saw it was a (near) full moon thought that I was having percocet withdrawl or something) and then got into work and one of my coworkers appeared to be sleeping on break. Then i got to the back where I work and literally everyone was there so they sent some people home. and then i was informed that one of my coworkers was having a bad day and I said i was too. and then a different co worker kinda snapped at me.

So myself and everyone that I work with were all snappy and then some of the customers were too!

this guy came in and was yelling at his wife and talking to her like she's a retarded piece of poop and so I gave him some crappy fillets.

some other guy was yelling at his kid

then my least favorite customer came in right when we were about to close and just caused all kinds of shit

I got home and we went to wendy's where these two kids were just screaming their heads off.

no i'm really tired because i had a 5 hour shift w/ no break.

the full moon is an asshole. why do you do this to us!?

reading: about to do a tiny tiny bit but mostly i'm gonna sleep
school in 2 days. tomorrow is my last day of summer and work better not suck
last song scrobbled is something between the buried and me or pantera but i'm not gonna look it up

BEDA 20- Work. and learning

2010-08-20T19:43:00.002-05:00

I've been working all day today. just got home and ate. and now i'm about to leave to go to a party so i need to blog for today, and quickly.

work is on my mind at the moment so i'm going to talk about work.

i am very grateful to finally have a job. i like my job. compared to how I think other jobs would be, this one is probably better. its a privately owned business so everything is done however they want it to be which is a great thing. i love the people i work with. we have lots of fun. i like paychecks.

I have learned a lot of things in my 8ish weeks of working. lots of things about different things.

i've learned about cuts of meat/kinds of varieties of food
i've learned a lot about food preparation
i've learned about the physical aspects of working and adapting/healing etc involved
i've learned that I am very quick on the learning curve and can adapt to new things fast
i've learned how quickly you can become comfortable with people/get to know them when you are in a work environment with them.
i've learned a few things about communicating with people
i've learned lots about dumb people that come into work
i've learned that I am a hard worker that doesnt fuck around
i've learned lots of other stuff that is deeper in my conscious that cant really be put to words

its been a crazy experience

have not read today. dont have time to read tonight

no clue what my last song scrobbled was. havent been on my computer all day (this is the family computer)

BEDA 19- Re(re) Evaluating Goblet of Fire

2010-08-19T23:19:00.002-05:00

***SPOILERS***

(sorry for any area where this sounds too ranty)

Today I finished reading Goblet of Fire for the third time and then I watched the movie.

The book is excellent. It's definitely my favorite of the series. There are tons of things going on to keep the reader interested. Theres all the mysterious things going on like Bertha Jorkins missing, you've got the world cup, the whole mystery about the dark mark and world cup attack, sirius is saying that things are starting to turn bad again, theres an apparent scandal going on with both ludo bagman and barty crouch that everyone seems to be on the hush about, hermione and the whole S.P.E.W. thing, plus on top of all that you have the triwizard tournament. There was never a time that I was bored in all 733 pages of the book.

The movie, however, is horrible. I still don't know if I would call it the worst one but it's pretty bad. I understand that they had to make cuts to fit the plot into a movie format, i'm ok with that, but they cut out too much. This led to things getting very jumbled up and someone who has not read the book (a considerable amount of people) possibly have no clue what is going on. The entire movie focuses on the triwizard tournament when the things going on in the background are equally important; if not more so because of the way things unfold near the end of the series.

First of all Ludo Bagman is not in the movie at all. Neither is winky, dobby, any of the elves and the entire SPEW thing (which sucks because I was looking forward to seeing the kitchens). I can understand reasons for cutting out anything house elf related for time constraints so no major problems here. Dobby is the one to give harry the gillyweed for the second task, since there is no dobby in the movie neville does it because of the book moody gave him. In the book, moody WANTED neville to tell harry about the gillyweed and that didnt work out so he had to clue dobby to do it. So the fact that there was a part of a plotline missing and they filled the gap with something else that was still in the novel was played off very well.

A major problem with the movie is Barty Crouch. His family plays the ENTIRE role of moody being kidnapped, impersonated, and then getting harry into the tournament in order to get him to where voldemort is. He's supposed to be sick and mysteriously not coming to the events. In the movie he's somehow at the second task and then right after is found dead which basically didnt need to be in the movie AT ALL since in the end they didnt explain ANYTHING about HOW Barty Crouch Jr. was working with voldemort.

Which leads to the horrendous ending to the movie. The whole scene where moody turns back into crouch (david tennant hey that's cool. he plays a good crazy guy)- nothing was explained as it should have been. Granted the clues along the way were not in the movie so what was there really to explain?

Then in the book you have the two scenes that are not in the movie. The first being the scene in dumbledore's office where he tells dumbledore and sirius about everything that happened in the graveyard and they talk things over. Then theres the scene in the hospital wing where harry wakes up to fudge arguing with everyone and saying that voldemort is not back. THIS IS IMPORTANT TO THE STRUCTURE OF THE EVENTS TO FOLLOW! If anything they could have thrown together SOMETHING about fudge not believing voldemort is back. Instead they play it off (badly) in the next film.

Random things I noticed that were dumb for no reason:

the seats they get at the world cup are laughed about when in the book they are considered good seats
the world cup scene just not happening at all. HUGE anti climax
the hungarian horntail was never supposed to break free and chase harry around. this was personified to make a better scene, visually
this is very picky but it still bugs me that the patil twins (are they twins? i'm not sure) were both in gryffindor when one is supposed to be in ravenclaw.
The dancing scene with mcgonagall... WHAT WAS THAT?! where did that come from? all that time could have been used to explain other things better
the band at the yule ball was completely muggle looking/sounding and its my least favorite part of all the HP movies. its just gross
viktor krum says ONE LINE in the whole movie, at the end, and it's a wisper and lame. fleur pretty much only has one line as well
Voldemort's eyes are not "catlike" and red. this goes along with the rest of the movies. i just think he'd look a lot more evil if they would have stuck to that.

So the movie was all made for show to be a big hollywood movie and they didnt care that the back stories were important and only focused on the visual aspects of the tournament.

Here are some good things about the film:

I really started to notice how rupert grint and emma watson are great actors. a lot better than daniel radcliff anyway.
the dragon was great looking
the scene from when harry and cedric touch the cup to when they escape back into the quidditch field, everything involving the voldemort scene was PERFECT (except his eyes). All of that was fantastic and great

so there. mysterious things should have happened and the presence of voldemort needed to be a little more dire and fudge could have popped in to say at least ONE thing about how he doesnt believe he's back.

Reading: so totally owned today

Last song scrobbled: idk what it was but it was iwrestledabearonce i can tell you that

BEDA 18 i need a cool title to lure people to read this

2010-08-19T00:32:00.003-05:00

So this is late i know but whatever. i couldnt think of anything to write so i'm just gonna go for a free pass and just gun it tonight, as much as i hate doing these type of blogs. i've ha a bit to drink and for some reason when i'm at home, or alone, or in a quiet social setting i tend to do a lot of thinking and get all philosophical.

people hurt. people i care about. it sucks and I dont know what I can do about it.

shits about to get real once school starts because I have a job now. i'm about to be under the busiest/most stressful schedule i've had in my entire life and i dont know how its going to work out/how i'm going to handle it. i can literally only wait and see.

next summer is my last summer. i only have two more years of college left so the next summer will be the last time I am working part time (theoretically) and just waiting for school to start again. because after next summer everything is just work from then on until i retire. that's a scary thought. i dont know if i'm ready for that part of my life. i mean i'm 21 and I still dont do lots of things that people my age do to more towards the grown up parts of life. i've had my time here and it IS time to move on, but I've always liked to stay where I know is comfortable rather than take my chances and see where I can go. This is a bad thing. I'd lie and say its good to be safe and comfortable but where will I ever go if i'm too afraid to to branch out? even the first step of being on your own in college i'm not doing "correctly". i'm living at home while going to college that's 10 minutes from my house. I JUST started paying for my own gas in my car since I got my job. my parents still pay my phone bill. i still live a fairly sheltered life. it sucks but I dont know how I can push myself to get out there to where I should be.

something that I HAVE done on a very mature level the past few years is i've done a LOT of finding myself. trying new ways to get motivated and making different attempts to maintain different levels of things within my life. its all very complex and too vague to be put into words but i've done relentless experimenting and put loads of thought into how I compose myself nowadays.

I analyze some of these things TOO much, i suppose. mostly my social aspects. i AM getting better. having a job puts me in the "public" more often than I normally would be and so I am learning that I can function quite well in a new and changing environment; however novice it may be.

I expect this is what everyone is supposed to do in college though. But i quite like it. i know myself better than I ever have before. i'm able to let things of the past GO for once and learn from where I have messed up.

It's like i'm planning out the way things will unfold for the rest of my life with the way I think, sometimes. Like how I put tons of thought in my plans for living on my own. How I will arrange certain things, make sure I always remember to do other things, set aside time for these other things. Its all happening subconsciously and its kind of strange how its unfolding naturally; as if i've opened up a part of my mind with the press of a button that i've just noticed.

so i think that's enough self reflection for tonight

school in 5 days: bring it on (?)
reading: did some. gonna try to squeeze a bit in tonight so i can finish goblet of fire tomorrow (my truly last day off until winter break unless I happen to get a friday, saturday or sunday off work which is probably not gonna happen)
Last song scrobbled: "Lie"- Dream Theater

BEDA 17-A Letter to David Foster Wallace

2010-08-17T12:22:00.007-05:00

Dear Mr. David Foster Wallace,
Let me start off by saying that I know for a fact you are not someone who wants to be immortalized or seen as a kind of celebrity. You said that it was unnecessary for personalities such as authors to be considered something "above society" as a celebrity. Your insight on the subject leads me to assume that you would prefer this letter to be less formal and in a setting where it is intended to commemorate you. However, I must inform you, this is in fact my intention of this letter- to express my appreciation for your "existence" within my life. Notwithstanding, I will attempt to keep it based in reality and fantasize as little as possible.

Dear David,
It is with eagerness that I find myself writing to you today. While your writing is still fairly new to me, it has still created a lasting impact on my life. I was introduced to you last year when an online community I am involved in with some friends partly took place in "Infinite Summer", a recent program where a bunch of people get together to read Infinite Jest over a predetermined period of time. I did not wish to partake in this event because I had heard a few things about how monstrously enormous Infinite Jest is. Near the end of that year I was talking with a few of my friends who were nearly/newly finished with the book. I asked a simple question- "What is it about?" I received mixed answers; which now that I look back on it, an intriguing aspect of the novel was that the "plot" is sort of ambiguous.

The thing that kicked me into wanting to read the novel was that I was told it had lots of drug use and people with messed up personal problems. I'm still not sure why I am fascinated with literature that includes these things but that is when/why I decided to read Infinite Jest.
I finally ordered the book and began researching what I was about to get into. I grew more excited to read it over the weeks prior to starting.

I began reading Infinite Jest 21 January 2010-
http://dailybooth.com/PaulSaysThings/2787230

The first night I read through the second chapter. The second chapter of Infinite Jest is some of my most favorite writing ever. In the middle of reading it I almost screamed at how closely the events and emotions applied directly to my personal life. I later found that this feeling of connectedness through your writing is a reoccurring theme. In all of your different writings I always find at least one line that directly applies to something I have experienced.
I did not have to finish Infinite Jest before considering it one of my favorite novels of all time. I also did not have to wait until after I finished it before deciding that I was going to make it a personal goal to read all of your published works.

8 weeks later I finished Infinite Jest-
http://dailybooth.com/PaulSaysThings/3917227

I was so engrossed at the end of the book that I began to read up to 200 pages per day (with writing that tiny, that's quite impressive). When I finally finished the novel I placed it down, triumphantly, and sat there panting like a dog, in a daze, with my mouth hanging open. This continued for about 20 minutes before I regained consciousness.

I continued to my next steps- i ordered more of your books and began searching the internet for stuff about you. I became entranced with interviews, article, and audio about you as I began to read Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. By now the name David Foster Wallace became analogous with me to the extent that I received a birthday card in the shape of you-
http://dailybooth.com/PaulSaysThings/4205159

I can't remember becoming to rabidly infatuated with something/someone so quickly. This is the part where you might think that my praise of you has become too high and I hold you on a pedestal for irrational or unnecessary reasons. I am currently reading through Oblivion and only have Consider the Lobster left to attain and read through.

Let me explain this by saying that your work has empowered me in many respects.

You have first off written things of high intellectual requirement, however they are written in a way that they can still be understood.As you put it- assuming the reader is smarter than you/they think. This has enabled me to give my thoughts higher power and facilitated my mind to be used as a broader variety of tools.

You have explained things that apply to my personal life in ways that I could not fathom, and you have described things that I am/was too afraid to confront; making those skeletons in the closet come out to face me. Through these mechanisms I am able to re-evaluate aspects of my life and have found ways to embrace, let go, or change them.

You have opened my mind to new ways of thinking and unhinged new areas of my mind, through your way of explaining points of view and being very articulate about miniscule details. You have changed the way I perceive things on a vast scale.

For these reasons and for others that I have not yet grasped in a way that they can be explained through words and expressions I wish to explore ways to express my deep gratitude and affection of you, your mind, your perceptions, your faults, your triumphs, and your experiences, put forth for others to see through the act of writing. I wish to know your place of burial so that I could make a pilgrimage to it just to be in the presence of your remains and bask in the wonders of our sheer proximity. It is probably for this reason, among others, that the location of your grave is hidden, and I respect that.

With all of this I simply wish to say:

Thank you. For everything

Yours respectfully,
Paul D. Huber

(btw i went to http://iwl.me and you can enter something your wrote and it will tell you who you write like. i entered this and it said I write like David Foster Wallace. if that isnt the most perfect thing I dont know what is)
_______________________________
6 days till school.
Reading in a bit here and definitely more tonight
Last song Scrobbled: "A Change of Seasons" Dream Theater

BEDA 16- Sexy Thangs

2010-08-16T22:44:00.002-05:00

Avy came up with the topic today. I like it. Things that you find sexy/attractive that are not usually considered that way.

First off i'm going to say bookshelves because you knew it was coming. But not just any bookshelf. It has to really look good. I'm talking organized and potentially decorated with things in/on the shelves. (check my tumblr i probably posted some)

Girl's british accents. Sometimes. Not always but occasionally it will sound extra great. Doesnt depend on the girl either, just the voice.

Thick books. Goblet of fire is sitting next to me. lookin hot

Modern architecture. Not all of it, because it will either look attractive or repulsive. I cant really describe which is which but i know it when i see it. (check my tumblr if i have some on there)

Office furniture. And some office supplies if they are created in a very clever way. Comfy desk chairs and geniously designed organizing space makes my brain go "HRRRRRRRRRRWHIHRGRE"

Trashy whores. Just kidding. That goes on the list of things that are considered attractive but I DON'T find them so.

Gonna get these out of the way:

Karen Gillan

Jenna Fischer

Ellen Page

Kiera Knightly

Kate Beckensale

Kat Dennings

Meekakitty

(ok they are usually considered attractive but i'm leaving them here)

How cool Suchducks is

One week until school kill meeeeee

Read a little today but my computer/percocet ADD killed my focus. gonna read now

Last song scrobbled: "Everything is Alright"- Motion City Soundtrack

BEDA 15-Inception (and thoughts)

2010-08-15T22:14:00.004-05:00

HALF WAY THROUGH BEDA!

I saw inception last night. An hour into it I thought the film was one of the best. Half way through it I realized its probably my new favorite movie (or at least tied with fight club.) the scene where the van is folling and it's making the sleeping people fight in the hotel in zero gravity was so amazing. i just sat there with my mouth hanging open for like 45 minutes. it was perfectly confusing. just enough for me to understand it but crazy enough to be intriguing and deep. ellen page is hot. leonardo dicaprio didn't douche up the movie AT ALL. the only parts I didnt understand were very minor and parts that I didnt care about. I cried twice during the movie not out of sadness but out of sheer joy and excitement of how fantastic the movie was. on a scale of 1-5 i'd give it 30. on a scale of 1-10 i'd give it 600. inception is like if you woke up from the matrix into the real world and find out that the world you knew was a fake simulation and then you woke up from that and find out that everything you just learned about the matrix was planted in your mind by someone else who thought it up, and then you woke up again. inception has already changed the way I think about a few different things. it unhinged a few areas of my mind.

Since I have no real topic i'm going to keep my inception topic and just talk about some thoughts

Tomorrow is monday and I am off work. Tomorrow is one week until school. I still have to go get my books/parking permit. I do not want this school year to start. Next summer will be my last summer. WOW.

Eevee won my soul today in a game of OMGPOP pool.

Blaze is awesome. She was on blogtv and it was awesome. We are gonna break the world record for longest hug (24 hrs 17 min) Blaze wants to know what happens when we have to pee while hugging. Comment if you have suggestions.

I have taken 30 minutes to write this wow I should have started reading like an hour ago.

This year my school is giving free metro passes to all students so I can take the train down to the loop like every weekend now and go to the record store and chipotle omfg.

Tomorrow i might go get animal farm and farenheit 451 from target because they're really cheap on their "classics" rack. i wont be able to read them for a while because of other reading priorities but then i'll have them and wont have to think about it anymore which is nice.

I think about things like that very strangely. I'll get it in my head- ok, i want to read animal farm. and then i'll plan out when i'm gonna read it (after harry potter and during DFW but only if mockingjay is not out yet) and stuff like that and then i'll find out where i'm going to buy it and then i'm where i'm at now. and I havent bought it. i have no reason to get it just yet because i'm not gonna read it for a while. but it's such a fully articulate thing that I've contemplated that If i just go out and get it so it can sit on my shelf, its one less thing that i'll think about. very strange feeling indeed.

I only have 1 amoxycillin (sp) pill left to take with breakfast tomorrow and then i'm done with that prescription. meaning my healing of my wisdom teeth is pretty much done. one of my stitches came out yesterday. i ate a few hot dogs (with difficulty) and i'm about ready to go back to hot foods. w/r/t my other prescription (which is also running to its end) I found out that i had been calling it oxycodone which is just its chemical name. the pills i have are percocet. this was not necessarily a "good" discovery as the first thing that came to mind was "OH! i know what people do with those (besides take them for pain)" for more info please see the end of this blog.

Reading: read some Goblet of Fire today. no work tomorrow so i'll stay up late reading and then read a lot tomorrow

Last song scrobbled: "Through My Words"- Dream Theater

I have not smoked in 11 days but I did take 2 and a half percocet today but I felt nothing. it changed my blood pressure which made me feel hot but it always does that even if I take 1 like i'm supposed to. dont get all freaked out about it. it takes 3 before i'm in the zone where I need to worry about it and based on my weight and no tolerance built up for opiods i am NOT going to go there so i'm not afraid of any of this. plus i only have a few pills left total and once they are gone i am not doing anything like this again.

BEDA 14- More Harry Potter

2010-08-14T09:44:00.002-05:00

i have to write this early today because i'm going to the movies with friends tonight. I got these questions from Sara's VEDA yesterday

Favorite Character: wow I never really thought about this. I think i'm gonna go with Remus Lupin because he's really awesome and knowledgeable and stuff

Favorite Couple: Tonks and Lupin (still would be even if Lupin was not my favorite character

Part that made you cry the most: well I didnt cry at anything but the saddest part was Dumbledore falling from the astronomy tower

Favorite Location: Probably hogsmead.

What would you buy at Diagon Alley with a vault of galleons: a broomstick first off, then a bunch of books, and then random wizard gadget stuff like a sneakoscope etc

Which Deathly Hallow would you pick: invisibility cloak. i have no use for the other two first of all and I would love to sneak around people and hear what they're saying when they dont know i'm there

What would you see in the mirror of erised: I dont really know. Maybe my future self being successful and having a family

Least favorite book: Prisoner of Azkaban for reasons mentioned in my blog a few days ago

Favorite Book: Goblet of Fire

What does amsfmoawigmoerbimthrgoijv (idr how to spell it) the love potion smell like to you: I already did this in a blog but I thought of my other two smells- so the first one is still a bookstore filled with new books, then the smell off good coffee even thought I dont really like coffee, and Sara said in her video the smell after it rains and I just thought "YES!" but only if it's like moderate to cold outside. if it's hot then it just smells gross.

9 Days till school ugh ugh ugh

Reading: who knows if i'll get some done today. i'm going to the movies to a 10:30 showing so probably not

Last song scrobbled: "The Matter of Splatter (cover)" - Job For A Cowboy

BEDA 13- Katy's Boobs

2010-08-13T21:58:00.008-05:00

Lots of people want
Me to blog about Katy's
Boobs. So here you go

It's Friday the 13th and I have nothing to blog
I'm sitting by my window and there is no fog
It's getting late and no ideas come to mind
Lets post this blog before I run out of time

Poetry seems to
Be a good way getting
Out of doing things

I'm going to use poetry to blog about Katy's boobs
To make it funny and more appropriate for the noobs
If it were serious I would feel perverse
But Katy's still the coolest in the universe

Seeing as I know
Little about poetry
I will do my best

Haikus and couplets are about all I know
So lets keep going along with this show
I guess I should start with "Katy's boobs are nice"
Too bad I cant rhyme like Vanilla Ice

I'm not one to put
Lots of emphasis on boobs
Cuz there's more than that

Ogling boobs can be seen as disrespect
But for most guys it's their favorite subject
I go more for a girl's personality
But there are not many with this mentality

I'd rather find a
Loveable companion than
Love someone for looks

I don't mind the boobs, but the person they're attached to
Girls seem to appreciate this point of view
This is not to say I don't mind them
Just that it's not first on the list in my brain stem

If I were to tell
You that Katy's boobs are great
Its because she is

Katy is an awesome person that everyone should love
She's amazing on more levels than I can think of
Katy's boobs are lucky to be connected
To a girl who can not be perfected

You see it's not the
Boobs that make Katy awesome.
She does that herself

The way Katy is makes me glad to know her
Everyone else is sure to concur
If Katy's boobs are great then she makes them better
I'd love her even if her boobs were hiding under a sweater

10 days till school. Kill me
Reading: I didn't do any today. i was gonna watch a movie but whiney brother is making me leave the computer so I guess i'm gonna go read.
Last Song Scrobbled: "This is Who We Are"- As I Lay Dying

BEDA 12- Re(re)-evaluating Harry Potter (1-3)

2010-08-12T21:20:00.002-05:00

(there will be spoilers in here up until the end of the third HP book in case you are wondering [so valerie you are ok])

I JUST finished reading Prisoner of Azkaban for the third time in my life (the second being last year and the first being when it came out). I'm reading the series through for the third time and then watching each movie as I finish a book. I'm getting a better way to think about the books/movies overall instead of how excited I was when each came out.

The first book theres nothing you can really do to it. It has to set everything up and I have no problems with it at all. The movie is kind of lame but its still got a kid's movie feel to it and I get that. No problems there really.

I've always loved the way the second book is put together and I've reaffirmed that with my third reading of it. Its kind of murder mystery ish and everything fits together so cleverly at the end. The movie is still just another visual cliffnotes version of the book just like the first movie. It's alright but nothing too special.

The third book i've never cared for too much and at least I know why that is now. The whole big scene at the end that we expect to get from reading the first two books doesnt really happen. All the excitement is just a bunch of people in a room talking and then there's some time travel but it's not all that gripping. There are also TONS of quidditch matches in the book and it just kinda drags on with the only real plot line being serious black (obviously). The book really harps on how important the firebolt is when harry keeps going to look at it and finally gets it and uses it etc etc but the movie completely destroyed ALL OF THAT. Which is one of the things I hate most about all the HP movies was the whole firebolt thing was ruined.

The movie does justice. It kinda prances around the storyline instead of following it word for word (in some parts) like the first two films did. It cuts out some of the crap and sums things up nicely in a few scenes. However there are so many random things in the movie that do not need to be there and changes that were made for no reason. Overall though (dont think i'm being blasphemous for saying this) I think the movie for Prisoner of Azkaban is even better than the book. They changed the way some of the time travel/plot unraveling at the end happens and made it way easier to follow. The ending in the movie seems more exciting than the ending in the book as well. The movie did some really cool things that the other films dont have while the book is just kind of a drawn out version of filling in some characters and taking space until the 4th book happens (which is probably my favorite book. going to decide after i'm done with the series again).

I've always loved the 4th book and the film for it is just ok. It could have been better but anyways i'm going to go read it and see what the movie did to ruin the book.

Reading: did tons of it today
Last song scrobbled: "Your Belgian Things" - The Mountain Goats

BEDA 11- Sports COULD HAVE BEEN like life

2010-08-11T19:33:00.002-05:00

I played baseball in gradeschool. From about third grade till sixth grade I think. Can't remember exactly.

Anyways our team was pretty boss. The last-ish year I played we had an undefeated season and moved up into a league higher than our age level. We had two AMAZING pitchers and a few people that were just fantastic at specific things like catcher, first base, and hitting. We owned a bunch of tournaments and made it to the county playoffs one time (which was creepy as hell because they announced your name as you came up to bat and it was so official that we got freaked out and lost so badly).

I quit baseball because it was starting to get in the way of Boy Scouts. If you do not know I have been pretty big in boy scouts. I made it all the way to eagle scout. But ive had this weird theory about what could have happened if i quit boy scouts and pursued baseball throughout the rest of grade school and into high school.

First off I would have a different group of friends and different outlooks on things. I would have hung out with more sporty type people in high school which would have completely changed who I am today. I decided to be all anti-sporty people in high school and get involved with a bunch of alternative type people (which influenced 90% of the music I now listen to and some of my ways of thinking). The label I associated myself with in high school kinda worked out in the end because goth-ish people are usually nerds who like invader zim and old school video games. (just look at how much nerdy stuff there is at hot topic).

But if I had preppy friends i'd probably listen to rap now and be going to an out of town state university and being all "normal" and whatnot (and boring). I probably would have gone to a private high school because that's what all those types of people from my grade school went to. Private high school would have basically turned me into the opposite of who I currently am.

Its just so weird to think that if I had made one simple path change in my past I could be sitting here as someone I currently look down upon. I'd be that person and not be here blogging, listening to this music and chatting with my online friends. I'd be packing for college and talking about what parties i'm going to this weekend or something.

Boy Scouts and people not accepting me in grade school were kind of the best things to happen to me.

Reading: finished another story in oblivion today. Hopefully getting some prisoner of azkaban pwned tonight.

Last song scrobbled: "Somatically Incorrect" - Whitechapel

Days till school starts: 12 (oh no! did i mention I hate my school?)

BEDA 10- Things Thatt I Really Really Love

2010-08-10T20:04:00.004-05:00

i don't have a topic so i'm stealing ideas from lindsay and listing things that I really love:

The feeling of playing guitar. especially when it is something very difficult and I nail it.
the smell of a bookstore
fall
tons of rain that doesnt have wind or lightning/thunder associated with it
albums that are so good you can (and HAVE to) listen to the whole thing all the way through each time
Say Anything's music. Literally every time puts me in the greatest mood ever
Max Bemis from Say Anything
David Foster Wallace
The feeling you get when you read a book passage/lyrics and realize that it directly applies to your life
the way John Green's mind works
chocolate milk
really nice looking bookshelves
modern furniture
continuity
symmetry
the office
fight club
creating things/making things out of other things
nerdfighteria in general. so much can be said about everything it has done for me
my internet friends. I am closer to them than my irl friends
finishing a really good book and just sitting there stunned, thinking "wow"
mexican food
live music
(good) stand up comics
girls with eyeliner
green eyes
good pizza
the color red
chai tea
monty python
frank lloyd wright
knowing all the words to a really good song
people who are very experimental with stuff like music etc
getting people into new things
having the perfect amount of alcohol to make me not care just enough to be perfectly social (i have social anxiety so being able to truly relax in a public environment and completely enjoy myself is the best ever)
that 70's show
john darnielle
[adult swim]
the legend of zelda: ocarina of time
star wars
harry potter
being on the inside of an inside joke
imagining the layout of my future place of living

that's all i can think of in one go like this but I did pretty good

Reading: ok i didnt start prisoner of azkaban last night but i've read some oblivion today and i'm going to read more in a bit
Last Song Scrobbled: Muzzle- The Smashing Pumpkins

BEDA 9- My first surgery I guess?

2010-08-09T20:10:00.003-05:00

its 8-9-10 today tee hee

so I couldnt eat breakfast this morning because they said if I didnt have an empty stomach when I was put on anesthesia I COULD DIE. so I was just really tired going into the hospital this morning. I wasnt too freaked out. The last 5 minutes of prep I was kinda worried but that was because i've never been on an IV before. everything past that I didn't care about because I would be asleep.

So before they put the IV in i asked how long before everything kicks in and they said about 45 seconds. Putting the IV in was not bad at all. Even better than getting a shot. So i'm sitting there and they're asking me questions and nothing is happening yet. then i started looking at the ceiling and it became wavy. the lights were those kind that are long tubes and they suddenly got really wide and had a moving texture to them and I told the doctor they looked like clouds or water.

that's when I fell asleep.

I woke up and they helped me into another room because it was SO hard to walk. they put gauze in my mouth and told me some things and I got on a wheelchair and was taken to the parking lot where my mom pulled up and I got in the car. I dont remember anything before I fell asleep up until about an hour after I had been home.

In the car I called like 3 people and talked to them or left messages, i recorded myself saying things on my phone so look forward to that, and I am told that I kept repeating everything that I was saying because I forgot I said it. It was funny but apparently annoying because I wouldnt stop talking. I tweeted: "Wow i feel creat joe in not in saga this is cool"

when I got home I did a live show but it was not for very long because my face started hurting so I left. then my mom gave me some pain pills. I would later find out that these were not the pills I was prescribed but HER pills that she had leftover. after a while i started to feel a dull ache in my mouth and then it slowly got worse. and then my mom told me she didnt get my pills yet and it started hurting really bad and I started to freak out.

if you have ever been in a situation like this where there is a lot of pain, you cant think and you want people to cooperate with you. when the cooperation didn't happen I got really pissed at my mom and started yelling at her for not giving me the right pills. so she left to get my perscription.

meanwhile I sat at home as the pain became very intense. i went for an ice pack that my mom made me only it was just cubes in a bag which doesnt do much to conform to your face. i was looking for the hammer to crush it and couldnt find it and started screaming becausei needed the pain to go away and i just started smashing the ice on the counter with my hands. i busted the bag open and it was leaking on me for the next half hour. the pain became so intense that i was just sitting there in my room flailing my limbs and crying.

finally my mom got home and i took my pills and it went away in like 3 minutes.

i havent been able to eat much since I can only do liquids and jello today. so ive eaten 2 Ensures which are tasty but not satisfying and a cup of jello. i feel like crap sorta because i dont have much in my stomach but I will probably feel loads better tomorrow

i still have to get my top two wisdom teeth out, probably during winter break, but now that i know what it's like i'm not going to have any problem with it at all

Today I finished reading Chamber of Secrets and i'm going to start Prisoner of Azkaban tonight and also probably read a bit of Oblivion.

Last song scrobbled: 'Dirge For November'- Opeth

BEDA 8- I almost missed blogging today

2010-08-08T21:17:00.002-05:00

I was out with some peeps and didn't expect to be home but we got sent home early sooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Tomorrow I am getting my bottom two wisdom teeth taken out that I have put off since December. I am going to the hospital to do it so they can put me to sleep because I would freak out during the procedure and probably throw up while there are cuts in my mouth which would be bad.

So I can't eat anything and not even have water after midnight tonight, until after my surgery. Then its only cold, liquidy foods for a few days (and i dont have to work!) People are telling me I should be excited for the pain medication. We'll see. If i'm drugged up i'll try to record some of it/do a live show.

I have not freaked out about the whole thing yet, but I expect to in the morning.

ok now how do I end this....................................................................

sry for the ranty blog yesterday. it really didnt seem as ranty in my head as it did just explaining myself which is always what happens

OH OH OH we're finally gonna fix my car doors this week from my crash IN FEBRUARY

i am excite

No smoking: 4 days (and I literally CAN NOT do it for quite a while because i'm going to be healing in the mouth area so if i do it will mess it up so i'll get a good lead and then not want to mess up my "streak" and keep going

Reading: 100 pages left in chamber of secrets. i'll be reading A LOT the next 3 days
Last song scrobbled: 'Hands of a Killer'- Suicide Silence

BEDA 7 (I missed a day)

2010-08-07T21:49:00.003-05:00

and I dont care that I missed a day because I did not touch my computer all day yesterday. I went from sleeping to reading to working to a party and then came home and fell asleep at 1:30am.

So the whole pretense of "ok i'll do beda" is because i'm doing it with a "support group" (jk its just friends all doing beda together) and I was going to be given topics to write about. This is not always happening for reasons unknown. I don't know what to talk about and then I have to try to squeeze out a bunch of crap 2 hours before midnight with my brother bitching at me because he wants to sleep and his face is like 4 feet from my computer screen.

I am not a writer. I never claimed to be. Blogging 30 days in a row without pre-discussed topics should not be something for me to do. I like writing, but I dont like thinking things up.

It would be cool if I could go back to what I said a few days ago and work on self control stuff. I guess the fact that i'm still blogging with no topic is self control (?).

This is a good time of day for me to blog except I dont have unlimited time to work on things and make them good/thought out. I'd have blogged earlier but I've been busy for almost 2 full days.

I am bitching so much and trying to turn this blog around but i'm not going to be able to. I am literally just explaining myself but it comes off as whining, same thing as in my videos! There are so many dumb people in the world that I just have to make a video explaining something but it comes out all whiny and dumb (see my last video for an example).

Maybe I can make a video officially saying "Fuck You" and do what I want on youtube instead of not posting for a while, having people pester me with "where did you go come back make something" and then posting a video saying "hey i'm not dead i'll work on videos later". I still have mixed feelings about vlogging. I do not particularly like reviewing myself talking. It has gotten loads better but I still prefer not to do it. I want to make artsy/skit type videos instead of just me talking about life because then I feel better about people I know IRL seeing my videos. If they find out I do videos and want to watch them i'll gladly show them my redneck impression video but get super nervous about them seeing a talk about things type video.

I love editing, point blank. I hate acting and I hate writing. I love putting things together to create something. Basically i've decided as of right now- fuck everyone i'm going to do what I feel like doing and what fits into MY life, not how much you want to see my face on your screen. I'm going to change up what I do on youtube. I feel like I could start a second channel to do vlogs but whats the point when I already have 2 channels (one that I dont use anymore) and a collab channel (that I'm pretty sure i'm going to leave)

Lets get into that- school is starting in a few weeks and I have a job now. Even if I switched days i'm 80% sure i'm going to have to leave 7awesomebookworms because I am not going to have the time/energy/creativity to make a video every week. Plus the intent of joining a collab channel was that it would not interfere with my personal channel. Guess what- it did. I had time to post last wednesday but I didnt because I HAVE NOTHING NEW TO TALK ABOUT. I dont do much with my life so it is pointless for me to make a video every week on a channel that has no structure/guidelines/themes/etc. Every single week:

Hi
*talk about something*
*this is what i'm reading*
*work/school/etc*
*something i'm GOING to do*
*taking up space*
*ok bye*

Every week for the past like 3 months.

I dont feel like there is even a "conversation" happening between the other collab members because most of the time everyone else either doesnt post or hasnt seen the other videos throughout the week. So who am I making the video for?

Cory, Katy, Eevee, Rachel, Spring, Darci (if any of you see this, i know katy will 4 sho) please know i'm not bitching you all out or being angry about this, i've just lost interest and dont see a point for me anymore. I still have not made a final decision but once school starts for me there is a very good chance I'll be leaving 7awesomebookworms.

Ok moody as hell blog should stop now before it morphs into something else.

Reading: about to go do that right now
Not smoking: 3 days. I'm back to being determined about it and turned it down 2 days ago.
Last song scrobbled: 'Informal Gluttony'- Between the Buried and Me
Self Control for the day: i'd say yes.

BEDA 5- My Day, Patronus/Love Potion

2010-08-05T15:25:00.003-05:00

I'm going to start calling it BEDA, despite the face that I initially hated it, because its easier

First of all i'd like to say that I didn't even turn on my computer until 2pm so I could get things done. Granted today I set my alarm for 8:30 in attempt to get into a regular sleeping/waking schedule but I fell asleep twice and got up at 9:30. So tomorrow i'm setting it for 8:45 (15 minutes extra can do WONDERS)
So today I finished reading HP and the Sorceror's Stone and immediately put my bookmark in Chamber of Secrets (gonna start it tonight). I also finished the first story in Oblivion by David Foster Wallace that I am reading along with Valerie(2776) and Arka(pain).
Once that was over I turned on my computer and immediately got to "work" by finishing up The Show with Ze Frank. So now i'm officially done with my orientation and am a new member of the league of awesomeness (you have no clue what that means unless you watch The Show)

So now to talk about my patronus. Ive taken many quizzes to make sure I get the same result (the same thing I did to make SURE I was a Ravenclaw) and the answer I always get is a squirrel. Squirrels are my favorite animals which tends to make people laugh sometimes. I love them. They're like ninjas and have that animal way of thinking like dogs and cats that make them funny.
I guess I can relate to a squirrels mannerisms. They are very sporatic and gittery. Ever seen a squirrel in the middle of a road when a car is coming towards it? Quite often squirrels will run back and forth not sure which side they should run to before getting hit my a FREAKING CAR. I can be the same way with decisions. I'll go back and forth and frequently change my mind about things (like yesterday's blog about my priorities constantly changing)

Since that didn't take up enough blog space i'll go into more harry potter stuff and tell you about what the love potion smells like to me (if you dont know there is a love potion in harry potter that smells different to everyone) To me it would smell like the inside of Barnes and Noble. That bookstore specifically smells better than others. I'm not sure why. Part of it is probably because of the coffee shop they have in there which gives a faint smell of coffee on top of the smell of new books. Old books DO smell interesting but I think a room full of NEW books smells better than old books.

Reading: PWNED for the day. Finished Sorcerer's Stone, started Chamber of Secrets and read some of Oblivion
Days Not Smoking: 1 (ok I failed yesterday so kill me. but i'm still noticing that the initial act is what I find exciting about doing it, not the effects, because often those suck after almost 3 years of doing it)
Last Song Scrobbled: 'The Curse of Castle Dragon'- Paul Gilbert

Blaugust 4- Conflicted

2010-08-04T14:27:00.004-05:00

I mentioned yesterday that I lack self control in certain areas of my life. (once again I was going to read today and here it is 2:30pm and i have not left the computer) I also fail to prioritize things sometimes.

Currently i'm in the middle of 3 different programs that i'm watching online. If i would just work on the shortest one first I could get it out of the way.

I tend to move around my priorities quite frequently. Example is today I wanted to figure out my render issues on Sony Vegas and upload a video. I did that, so my next major goal of the day is to catch up on reading. Before pulling myself from the computer to go read I got a phone call from a friend who wants to hang out. Leaving the house for potential fun is a pretty top priority so It just replaced reading.

So in the back of my head to make myself feel better i'm going to say that I will come home at a decent hour so that I can still read TONIGHT. Which is why I'm blogging now, so I will not have excuses to not read tonight.

So i'm going to a friend's house. The house that I go to on an almost daily basis sometimes. This is due to the fact that he is always available to hang out and I never have any other plans as my other friends are always busy. This partly sucks because the one that can always hang out is the one that contributes to the smoking problem. We don't have much to do over there besides watch tv and listen to music so smoking becomes something to do or becomes a way to make doing nothing fun and/or bearable. My best plan of action would obviously be to stop hanging out with this guy but I don't think I can do that. I am still good friends with him and he's the only one that likes the same heavy music as me so its great to be able to listen to music with him and talk about bands. Its also nice to have a place I can always go if I need to escape the house.

So i'm going over there and he just got off the phone with me and told me about his new pipe and so he's GOING to smoke and GOING to offer it to me and I'm going to try my best to resist. I never know how well i'm going to be able to do this.

I have an addictive personality. You probably already know this- whenever I get into something i REALLY get into it and obsess over it. (Dont believe me? just go look at my last.fm and see how many plays Dream Theater has over all my other bands because I am addicted to Dream Theater) So I have an addictive personality I have come to terms with this. I can't get off this computer to go do other things I want to do etc. When you add substances to an addictive personality that's probably not a good thing. When i'm on something once it starts to kick in, no matter what my initial limits are, I will usually go into a mode where I will only say "ok, how can I get more of this into my system?" This is not to say i'm always running around looking to get fucked up, just WHILE i'm on it I want to keep going further.

Since we're talking about this sort of thing I'd like to blog about, because putting things out there in writing form makes me feel better, the fact that I tried a new substance a few weeks ago.

So far i've done- alcohol, weed, and a strain of opium that was very diluted and not very powerful. Now I can add this stuff called K2 to my list. In a nutshell its synthetic weed. It's still a new thing so not much is known about it but basically they take a bunch of herbs and spices and spray it with a chemical. This chemical contains some of the active ingredients found in marijuana. The stuff is sold as incense but some genius found out that you can smoke it and get a super weed high. I was told it was such a high that it was near hallucination. My friend got some for his birthday from someone and it didnt break any of my personal substance use rules (I do have some guidelines that keep me away from doing things like crack and meth and heroin) so I opted to try it out.

I did not like it. I was INCREDIBLY self concious and my mind was racing the whole time. I was going nuts and starting to shake. I thought oh no this is a bad trip I need to go chill out somewhere and wait this out so I went into the AC and watched tv until it was over.

Addictive personality thought that even though it sucked I should try it again now that I know what it's like It could be different. So I did it again that night and it wasnt as bad. I think the first time I was just freaked out by what it might do.

The rest of that week we didnt smoke weed because we had this K2 stuff. The next time I did finally smoke weed it didnt affect me as much since I was used to the K2. I still have not been able to find out if the K2 has permanently affected my weed tolerance but if it HAS then that is a GOOD thing because that means weed will not do anything for me any more and I wont want to do it.

Ok babbling too much so i'm going to end this.

Days of no smoking- 6.5 (today is not over yet, sadly) *edit: i failed*
Reading- a TINY bit today, hopefully more later on *edit: i succeeded*
Last song scrobbled- 'Roboturner'- Between the Buried and Me

Blaugust 3- EVERYONE WANTS ME TO TALK ABOUT BOOBS

2010-08-03T23:45:00.003-05:00

I need to start planing out my bloging thing because I dont have ideas and then I say hey tweet me ideas and everyone wants me to either talk about them or Katy's boobs. And its 11:47 and my brother is being a bitch and telling me to get off the computer. I sort of lose my mind when I get in front of the computer. Its ADD gone wild. Especially when I have this ability to multitask like a baws on this giant screen I have now. Skype, background music, checking random social networking sites, and then theres the stuff i'm ~supposed to do~. Like blog. This doesnt even count the things I'm supposed to do/distractions outside the computer.

I wanted to read today. Like a lot because I didnt read yesterday and i'm reading a book along with other people so i need to keep up. I DID NOT READ TODAY BECAUSE OF THIS COMPUTER.

I need to learn some self control. Lots of it is I feel like i'm going to miss out of something so that I just stay online to see what happens.

I guess I could make BEDA have an overarching theme of self control.

Speaking of self control and failing at it let me bring up the fact that I got back into smoking the last 3 weeks. It sucks. My current goal is to not do it within the month of August as a start.

So I guess I can end blogs with that as well

Days of not smoking: 6 or 7 I can't remember. Lets go with 6 because it will make me feel like i've achieved less which will make me want to achieve more

Reading: the same stuff I did yesterday with NO PROGRESS
Last song scrobbled: "The Grand Conjuration"- Opeth

Blaugust Day 2 etc- Family and 5 Misspelded Words

2010-08-03T00:09:00.002-05:00

I was told by my, I guess BEDA/Blaugust/VEDA/Vlaugust buddies (?), that I should talk about my family.

I don't really know what to talk about other then a general breakdown of where everyone "stands" for lack of a better word.

First of all I just have one younger brother who is going to be 18 the beginning of October. Everyone that doesn't know him thinks he's like 12 or something which is kind of funny.

So I live with my brother and my parents. My grandparents, my dad's parents, live 1 block over in the house that my dad grew up in (the house that WE live in actually belonged to an old lady that paid my dad to cut her grass and he waited for her to die to buy her house). My dad is one of 5 kids. I have 2 uncles and 2 aunts on his side of the family. My grandpa owns a farm that he used to take the family to every weekend to put them to work and stuff. The whole country thing rubbed off on everyone because all my aunts and uncles moved out to the country. One of them owns his own farm. So there you have it i am legit part redneck

All of my aunts and uncles are married except one of my uncles is divorced. My two aunts have kids totaling 3 cousins that I have- all 3 girls, all 3 younger than me and my brother.

My mom just has one brother who is married and lives in California where he plays piano professionally. Both of my mom's parents have passed away, her dad when she was really young and her mom a few years ago. I don't really know my uncle very well because I barely get to talk to him and he is kind of a difficult person (which sounds mean but i'm not meaning it that way. he's very cool just kind of different). His wife is very nice and friendly.

Then there are other intricacies like my grandpa's two brothers- one deceased and one married twice, and my grandma's sister. But those areas don't have anything interesting to talk about.

My family has lots of inside jokes like i'm sure most families do. We have certain words that we used and phrases that we use that are just riddiculous when you don't understand the context.

Here are some examples with the context intentionally removed:
Beebs
Formost (not foremost, this is a different thing related to a motorcycle)
Tutor Nelpa
The Shit Eatin' Grin
and now that i'm trying to think of them it occurs to me that there are not as many as I thought because lots of them are already existing things we just say them with a weird voice or emphasis to denote family things.

My family is weird in the way that only a family can be. Its difficult to explain

Our main traditions are the way we do Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Thanksgiving used to always be at my grandparent's farm but the trailer there has become run down and we haven't been there in a while. So now thanksgiving is at whoever's house happens to be able to do it.

As for Christmas we go by order of age of my dad's side of the family. I can't remember if it goes oldest to youngest or youngest to oldest but they seem to know. My aunt started a new thing last christmas where she bought a serving dish and a special pen to write down who's house it was at and what year it was on the underside of the dish.

Also my aunts/uncles/parents do secret santas which are drawn at thanksgiving. All the children (meaning my dad and his siblings) usually save up for one big thing for my grandparents.

we don't really have anything ~juicy~ that goes on so this blog is kinda lame.

5 words I misspell all the time:
Together
Ridiculous
I cant think of 3 more at 12:30am which makes me sad.

Currently reading:
half way through HP and the Sorcerer's Stone
Oblivion by David Foster Wallace

Last song scrobbled:
The Crunge- Led Zeppelin

Ok I got convinced into doing BEDA/Blaugust...

2010-08-01T23:07:00.002-05:00

but only because a bunch of my friends are doing it and we are all collaberatively coming up with ideas. I tried BEDA in april but failed miserably because I didnt have enough to talk about so lets try this again.

I guess I can talk about motivation here.

I really should impliment good ideas the second I get them. But I dont. This is bad. Partly because I am a self concious person and I worry about what people will think of me even in video form. I'll come up with an idea and think its really great and then not do it, maybe write it down or something, and then when it comes time to finally do it in video form I either think OTHER PEOPLE will think it's dumb or think that I will look dumb doing it and just not do it.

But that's just video motivation. I procrastinate most other things too. I have a SERIOUS problem with over thinking things. I always think that everything is going to be much worse than it actually is. I tend to freak out about the unknown type of stuff.

I have problems even motivating myself to do things I love. Like reading. I love reading but sometimes it is very hard to get myself to do it. I find that with almost everything a big part of the actual thing is the parts leading up to doing the thing (if that makes sense). Like homework. It sucks but what really sucks is getting in the process of doing it. Once you have all your materials out and your book turned to the right page the actual process of doing homework isnt as bad as it's made out to be. And I tend to put this with everything.

Reading can be tiresome believe it or not. It takes a lot of stamina or some other word that I can not think of at 11:17pm and it can be hard to get in the process of doing it. Many times I just try not to think about it, get off the couch/office chair, pull out the book and just start reading. The first few pages might go slow but it tends to gain speed as I continue with it.

I figure it's probably a good thing that I at least realize I have this particular problem with motivation. I have recognized the problem but still have not come up with a great solution (if you have any IT WOULD BE GREAT TO HEAR ABOUT THEM IN THE COMMENTS).

Well I guess that's it for the thrown together day 1 of blaugust. See i'm already saying this is crap and from your point of view it may not be. I need to work on that self conciousness but that is a topic for another blog.

My Social Media Paper

2010-05-22T19:53:00.002-05:00

Blogs are for writing. I do not write often. So here is something that I wrote. For school. I got an A on it so it may be worth reading

Social Media Has Its Purpose

The past few years have brought a variety of innovative ways for everyone to communicate with each other. New social media is emerging as a huge industry; and the industry is thriving. The internet is changing most Americans’ social aspects of life. Sites like Twitter and Facebook redefine what it means to be “in touch” with someone. Typically when something new breaks through there will be lots of skepticism before it is widely accepted. Social media and electronic communication are definitely under fire at the moment. Many say that the new forms of communication are too impersonal and that there is much room for misinterpretation because text has no tone of voice. While I can agree with this I think there are still too many good qualities about electronic communication, given the correct context and understanding of when it is appropriate, for it to be cast aside completely.

Text messaging is probably the most scrutinized form of communication. Many people easily become too involved with text messaging and it can do more harm to their social life than good if not used properly. I use text messaging sparingly when I need to talk with someone and can not be on a phone. It is a great way to easily connect with someone to ask about a quick detail or to achieve something that is not necessary for an entire phone call. I also enjoy the ability to send out one message to a few people at once. My group of friends get together every week for wing night at Culpepper’s and I get one of these mass texts each week as a reminder of the time and place we are meeting up. If I call someone and they are not available I will sometimes send them a text instead of leaving a voice message to open communication with them, as long as the conversation is not urgent.

Important conversation and messages that need to be responded to in a timely basis is not the place for text messaging. People often get annoyed when someone is not responding to a text message within twenty minutes yet they refuse to dial the number to call them. If you expect an urgent response, you should call, not text. Serious conversation should also not be over text messaging. There is no tone of voice in text and if the conversation is balancing on the edge of an argument the conversation should be moved to a phone call.

The impersonal aspects of electronic communication can actually be useful in some cases. Not everyone is as open an social as they would like to be and it is awkward for some people to make new friends. Some friendships can begin over electronic and text based communication before they move into areas of personal connection. I have met a few people at school that I have started talking to through Facebook or text messaging and it becomes much easier to open up to someone new. It becomes convenient that I can talk to new people through text and be able to hide any bad first impressions I may give off. Eventually I will get to know someone enough to know when I am ready to move the communication on to something like a phone call. It is important for those on the receiving end of this situation to be aware when meeting new people. We have all heard horror stories of people meeting online and then finding out who they were actually talking to once they decide to meet in person.

Social networking sites like Facebook can be a great place to keep in touch with your friends. It can also help you connect with people that you’ve lost touch with. I’ve found old friends from grade school, sports teams, and old neighbors that I haven’t talked to in years and was excited to be able to reconnect with them. Facebook has a few features that can also be great to connect with people as long as certain requirements are in place for it to be effective. The biggest problem with connecting on Facebook is trying to communicate with someone who does not visit the site very often. This is when communication with that person should be moved to another form. I do not have many problems with this because my close group of friends check the site every day or so. Since everyone is able to be contacted in a timely manner through Facebook, my friends utilize features such as the events page to plan get togethers. Whenever one of my friends has a birthday party coming up, the host will usually start an event page with information on the time and location of the party. They are then able to invite everyone to the party through Facebook and the event page will keep track of who plans on going, who can not make it, and who still is not sure. While this tool is useful and quick, it is still important to consider a personal connection with the host to touch base with them on the specifics of the party when the date is approaching.

The Facebook status updates, which are essentially the same thing as an update on Twitter, are very useful for keeping in touch with people. Everyone gives quick updates on what is going on in their lives and it is most likely you will hear about the major events in someone’s life by occasionally reading their status updates. When I was in a car accident a month ago I updated my Twitter and Facebook and my friends and family were all instantly aware of what was going on. All of my friends work a lot during the week and I only get to see them about once a month. It is even difficult to get a hold of them by phone and sometimes even by text so Facebook is essential for me if I want to know what is going on with them.

Since I am not able to see my friends very often social media and textual communication are a huge part of my life. I have met many people through online communities and through YouTube and I talk to my group of online friends every day. In many ways I have become closer to my online friends than my regular group of friends. “Real” friends are limited to those that live around you while online friends can be from anywhere in the world so you are able to pick and choose your friends based on their compatibility with your personal tastes. I have gotten to know these people very well though Twitter and Facebook and through the instant message program Skype. I would not call my relationship with my online friends impersonal by any means because we all know each other so well and are able to communicate ourselves to each other easily. Skype has a voice chat feature that allows a conference call where all my online friends can speak to the group at once. I also know them on a personal level because most of them make videos on YouTube so you can see how they act in a regular setting and they become more than just text and a user name.

My younger brother has an Xbox 360 and a subscription to Xbox Live which connects his game system to the internet so he can play online with people all over the world. The Xbox comes with a headset that connects to a port in the controllers so that you can talk to the people you’re playing with. There are options to become friends with people on Xbox live with either people you already know or even new people you’ve met online. Most of my brother’s friends have an Xbox and connect with him through this online system. Because of this my brother gets to talk to his friends every day. Many of his friends have moved away since he went to grade school with them so it is an important piece of technology to utilize so that he can stay connected with his far away friends.

Who knows where technology will bring communication in the years to come. I predict that electronic communication will be refined and more widely accepted in the future as the next generations will be brought up with more technology in their lives. People are generally afraid of change, so when new and innovative technology is released, it is not always seen as completely functional or necessary. There have already been uprisings in technology within the past few years to make electronic communication more accessible and practical. Voice chat is popping up in places where there was only text based chat and the ideas of video chat are also growing. Sites like YouTube have made great strides in expressing yourself to the world through video- this is just the beginning.

There can be many setbacks with each form of electronic communication; these need to be acknowledged in order for the various methods to become completely effective. Electronic media is very useful but only when used under the correct circumstances. It will be exciting to see what electronic communication will evolve into once its purpose is understood. The limits and restrictions depending on each form of electronic communication should be realized so that everyone appropriately chooses the right method for their needs at the time. In many ways electronic communication is being abused and the future will hopefully bring a better understanding of when it is appropriate to use electronic media and when communication should be brought up to a more personal level.

My College Essay on Nerdfighters

2010-03-12T10:42:00.004-06:00

This is my description essay for my college english class. It's 7 pages (double spaced). I turn it in on Monday. I'll put up what grade I get when It gets back to me.

“On Nerdfighteria Island”

Chances are you have no clue what a Nerdfighter is. It is still a very underground culture; a sub-culture of nerd sub-culture. There are at least 200,000 Nerdfighters in the world at this point. The total number of Nerdfighters can be measured by the number of subscribers the Vlogbrothers, the creators of Nerdfighters, have on YouTube. Outside of this number are a tiny group of people who know what a Nerdfighter is yet are not one themselves. This group consists of friends, parents, or other relatives of Nerdfighters and possibly a few people who have caught the limited media coverage about Nerdfighters. But just what is a Nerdfighter? Even Nerdfighters themselves have trouble describing it in a nutshell. On the surface, Nerdfighters are an online community of nerds who band together to find peace, knowing that they are not alone and that there are other people out there who are just as nerdy as they are and love the same stuff they do. This sounds like a simple explanation; however, there are many things that set Nerdfighter culture apart from regular nerd culture.

But what exactly is a nerd? Based on your views and social standing you may have a different idea of what a nerd is than the next person. The main thing that makes a nerd a nerd is liking stuff. Nerds like many different things from many different aspects of life, most notably pop culture. It is easy to pick out some nerd cultures right away. Fans of things such as Star Wars, comic books, video games, Harry Potter, Doctor Who, and Pokémon are typically labeled as nerds. However, as long as you are obsessed enough about the subject, you can be a nerd about almost anything, such as music, books, cars, and movies. A great word to describe a nerd is eclectic. The second word that I would use to describe a nerd is enthusiastic. Nerds get very excited about the things they like. John Green, critically acclaimed young adult author and fellow nerd, says that “Nerds are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it… when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff,’ which is just not a good insult at all. Like, you are just too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.”

The only way to explain Nerdfighters thoroughly is to start with its history. In January of 2007, two brothers realized that the closeness of their brotherhood had been stifled by the amount of textual communication that took place between them. They began the Brotherhood 2.0 project in which they would only use the popular internet site YouTube to communicate to each other through the use of vlogs (video blogs) for an entire year. The aforementioned author John Green and Hank Green, a web designer and founder of the website Eco-Geek, which reports on ways green technology is being developed, became known as the Vlogbrothers on YouTube. They were not allowed to e-mail, instant message, text message, or use any other means of text based communication throughout the course of the Brotherhood 2.0 project. It may not have been the first, but it was definitely the first widely popular collab channel (a YouTube account that has more than one user) on YouTube.

The project took off and slowly began to gain a following of viewers. A month and a half after starting the project, John Green made one of his videos while waiting for his flight at an airport. John visited the arcade at the airport and found a game called Aero Fighters. The text of the title was very steep and there was a piece of plastic covering the very top of the word “Aero” so at a first glance John thought the game was called Nerd Fighters. John took the idea and ran with it, as many authors are capable of doing, and began to discuss in the video what a game called Nerdfighters would be about. He began to question what it is to be a nerd and why being a nerd is seen as a bad thing. In a later video, John went on to say, "Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?” John made the point that many important historical figures were nerds and that being a nerd is something that should be celebrated. He went on to dub the viewers of the Brotherhood 2.0 project the “Nerdfighters” and the culture was born.

John and Hank later discussed in the following videos more of what Nerdfighters was about. They established that instead of bones and tissue, Nerdfighters were actually made of awesome; and that they used this awesome to fight to reduce “world suck“ levels. World suck is anything in the world that is a bad thing, such as cancer, poverty, global warming, abuse, and especially social injustice against nerds. Nerdfighters are nerds who “band together against the scourge of popular people” and fight with their brains instead of their fists. Nerdfighters fight for nerds just like Freedom Fighters fight for freedom. Nerdfighters live by the initialism DFTBA which stands for “Don’t Forget To Be Awesome.” Non-Nerdfighters are typically the ones who FTBA (forget to be awesome) by promoting world suck through acts such as racism, breaking the law, discrimination, and drug use.

There are many different varieties of Nerdfighters depending on what nerd culture they most identify with. Not all Nerdfighters are the same, and one must choose which type of Nerdfighter they are going to be once they choose to become one. There are literature Nerdfighters, Zelda Nerdfighters, theater Nerdfighters and Star Wars Nerdfighters just to name a few. If a Nerdfighter is most interested in Pokémon, he or she may choose to become a Pokémon Nerdfighter and would be able to name all 493 Pokémon, will have played more than one of the Pokémon games, and will own all the Pokémon movies. A music Nerdfighter will listen to a dozen independent bands that not many people have heard of, be able to rattle off facts about the personal lives of The Beatles, and be able to play an instrument or two.

Along with the birth of Nerdfighters, the insider culture, canon, and references began. One of the first and most popular inside jokes was started by John’s friend and fellow author Maureen Johnson. She noticed that if you put “…in your pants” after a book title it made the titles significantly funnier. “My Pants” became the name for the online forum where the Nerdfighting community could interact. From here, thousands of ideas and expanse of the culture began such as putting things on your head to make yourself feel better about life, John’s “puff level” which refers to when John’s stress gets higher and he pulls on his hair making it stick up, and referring to John’s wife as “the yeti” because she is believed to exist but has never been seen in a Vlogbrothers video. These and many others, including many references from John’s novels and songs that Hank wrote, became the basis of the insider culture of Nerdfighteria. Nerdfighteria refers to an imaginary island where there all the Nerdfighters live together.

John and Hank realized they had started something fantastic. Nerds are typically the outcasts of society and are always on the outside looking in- Nerdfighters became a way for nerds to be on the inside and feel like they are a part of something. Nerdfighters are known for using their powers “for awesome”, or for good things that fight world suck levels. They started the annual You Tube “Project For Awesome” where hundreds of Nerdfighters would each make a YouTube video in support of a charity. The Nerdfighting community then got together and rated, favorited, and commented on all of the charity videos to get them onto the most rated, most favorited and most discussed page on YouTube thus gaining charity awareness. The Nerdfighters recently joined forces with the Harry Potter fan community in a project called “Helping Haiti Heal”. All sorts of prizes including autographed copies of John Green’s books, signed copies of Harry Potter books and other various Harry Potter/Nerdfighter related prizes were auctioned off by selling raffle tickets at various donation prices. The project gained over $123,000 and filled three cargo planes (named Harry, Ron, and Hermione) with supplies to send to Haiti.

A Nerdfighter is a good role model. The community values “quality over quantity” and promotes fortitude that parents couldn’t pay to have instilled into their children. Nerdfighters value education and being good students, doing their homework and trying their best to get good grades. Nerdfighters are polite to everyone and believe in equality and fairness. They also have a love of books and enjoy showcasing their literacy through their advanced vocabulary. Nerdfighters are very social and have many different ways of interacting with each other. Nerdfighters.com would be the first on the list in general communication between Nerdfighters. YouTube is next on the list where anyone can find Nerdfighters that make videos and interact with their various Nerdfighter viewers. Another website that is used to rally Nerdfighters together is blogtv.com. This site lets a host broadcast through a webcam to a chat room. Many friendships are sparked through these main sites. Once initial interaction begins, Nerdfighters keep in touch with each other through Facebook, Twitter, and Skype- a popular instant messenger that also allows video and voice chat.

Many people on YouTube come across John and Hank’s videos and use lots of bad grammar to insult them. Comments such as “your gay” and “ugh jeez get a life nerd” have led to haters being known as “giant squids of anger.” Giant squids of anger, who are rude and vacuous people, also referred to as “Decepticons,” would be the opposite of a Nerdfighter along with the assumed jocks, preps, and popular kids that are typically associated with the opposites of nerds. Moments involving these types of people are moments when Nerdfighters spring into action. A Nerdfighter would look at the comment “your gay” and explain to the commenter that “your” is used incorrectly, would explain to them why “gay” should not be used as an insult, and possibly fight back at them with a Shakespearean insult.

Nerdfighteria is an excellent place to get positive feedback for one’s creative ideas. Nerdfighters are encouraged to be creative and make good use of any talents they have and also to try new things. There is a strong music scene in Nerdfighteria which has led to the creation of DFTBA Records, co-founded by Hank Green. The label features a place for YouTube musicians to reach their audiences and distribute their music to their fans; including Hank Green who was one of DFTBA Records’ first artists and has released three albums of songs that he created for “Song Wednesdays” on the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel.

Occasionally, Nerdfighters will get together at Nerdfighter Gatherings where everyone can meet up IRL (in real life). Most notably, John and Hank went on “The Great American Tour De Nerdfighting” in 2008 and visited over 30 cites and rallied Nerdfighters together to sign things, play music, discuss John’s books and have lots of fun. Nerdfighter gatherings bring the friendships off of the internet and into real life; and meeting Nerdfighters from the internet in real life is nowhere near the same as meeting some potential rapist in a chat room. Some Nerdfighters, because of their nerdy tendencies, are unable to achieve the social life they dream of; and Nerdfighters is a way for these kids to acquire the interaction they struggle for.

Nerdfighting goes far beyond the community, it is very active on an individual level and is an attitude and a lifestyle. Nerdfighters grow to accept themselves and become happy with who they are while fighting for what is good and right. The little project that John and Hank started over three years ago has inspired hundreds of thousands of young adults to be better people. It is challenging to describe Nerdfighters to an outsider because of how much content has been spawned in the past few years. Nerdfighters can be a life changing experience (it is for me) and it is a wonderful, positive lifestyle for young (nerd) adults to get involved in. I have met many amazing people through the Nerdfighting community (a few of whom helped me edit this essay to make sure all of the canon and terminology is correct) and have found closure in embracing my inner nerd and being proud of it. Being a Nerdfighter is a strong characteristic that I hope stays with me for the rest of my life.

NERDS IN MY ENGLISH CLASS!

2010-03-05T19:06:00.002-06:00

This was a sample essay my college english teacher gave us. I DID NOT WRITE THIS! But i think it's super awesome that one of her former students wrote it. I would like to meet this person:

The True Revenge of the Nerds

Do you like Fantasy? How about Science Fiction? Do you like Comic books too? How about horror movies, Monty Python, video games, Doctor Who, cult films, cartoons, or Dungeons and Dragons? Have you argued over whether Kirk or Piccard made the better starship captain? Were you angry when George Lucas changed Star Wars and had Greedo shooting Han first when everybody knows Han Shot First?! If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then congratulations, you may be a nerd. Relax; it's okay to be a nerd. If your immediate reaction to finding out that you might be a nerd was one of shock then you need to read my essay. Most people are nerds about one thing or another and that is what makes being a nerd so endearing. Knowing what a nerd is and how to recognize one will be an important skill throughout your life because if you are not a nerd yourself you surely know a nerd, even if you don't realize it. As all G.I. Joe lovers will attest, Knowing is Half the Battle!
Liking something from the above list does not necessarily mean that you are a nerd and liking something I have not put on the list does not exclude you from being a nerd. You can be a nerd about almost anything. Nerd is a lifestyle bit it is not a lifestyle by choice. Nerds cannot help but be nerds. I am convinced that it is embedded in DNA, no different than eye color, and is set into motion at puberty. Being a nerd is a remnant of the butterfly effect from a misstep of a Neanderthal ancestor. No amount of TARDIS inspired time travel can change nerds into something they are not. It is fate. It is destiny, and Resistance Is Futile!
Now that it has been made clear that being a nerd isn't a bad thing and it isn't a choice, how can you tell if you or someone you know is a nerd? Clue number one would be if you have grasped two or more of my pop-culture references used in the essay thus far. Seriously though, there are several factors that make a person a nerd and distinguish being a nerd from being a geek or a dork. If you know what these factors are then spotting a nerd can be as easy as a beholder spotting Waldo in one of those books. It is necessary to distinguish a nerd from a geek or a dork because these words are often used interchangeably and i find this to be completely unacceptable. Once you know what makes a nerd a nerd you iwll experience the Tribble effect, and nerds will seemingly multiply all around you.
The most effective way to demonstrate what makes a person a nerd is to compare and contrast nerds with geeks and dorks. The first quality that makes nerds what they are is that nerds do not discriminate knowledge seeking. Nerds know a log of things about a lot of topics. This knowledge can range from practical topics such as what a jumper switch in a computer is used for or naming the twelve cranial nerves to frivolous topics such as naming all the Jedi on the Jedi council or knowing how many times Superman died in his storied history. A geek knows a lot, in fact, almost everything about one topic but not nearly as much about others. For instance a geek might love Star Trek to the point of having learned Klingon and knowing which actor played which nameless ensign in what episode, but think that Star Wars is convoluted and ridiculous. A nerd, however, will like both Star Trek and Star Wars and also Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5, knowing a lot about all of them but having mastered none of them. A dork will also try to be diverse like a nerd but will have less knowledge mastery in all topics. The lack of mastery in and of itself isn't what makes a dork a dork. It is the lack of mastery combines with the unwillingness to admit when they have been proven wrong that makes a dork a mole person in the eyes of nerds.
It isn't just the mastery of the knowledge that makes someone a nerd it is also the way they respond when that knowledge is challenged. Nerds know the first video games Mario appeared in was Donkey Kong and if somebody were to come along and tell those nerds that the first game Mario appeared in was the original Mario Bros. the nerds would know this person was incorrect. However, nerds would know the person was wrong and not say anything or maybe kindly suggest that they believe the correct first appearance is Donkey Kong but that this could be solved with a Google search. This is, of course, unless the person that was wrong was a dork, in which case, anything and everything would be done to make that person embarassed at just how little they actually knew. Geeks faced with this same frustration situation would not only let the other person know how wrong they were but would also raise their voices, become indignant, tell them how dumb they are, and give them even more facts related to the subject. As i stated before, geeks are very passionate about one thing. When you are passionate about something, no matter how trivial it may be, you tend to fight for it as if it were a badge of honor. This particular geek just happened to be passionate about Mario.
Another quality of a nerd is that a nerd's knowledge, while at times may be practical, is not usually marketable. One of the two main factors that separate a nerd and a geek is that a geek can turn what they are a geek about into a merketable skill. When you are the best or know the most about something you are in high demand. This is especially true with people who are considered computer geeks, finance geeks, math geeks, and so on. A nerd's knowledge base and true passions run more on the pop-culture side of things. A nerd may make a living as a mathematician, financial expert, or a computer programmer but you have never heard of a finance nerd or a math nerd. Though, you do hear of Star Wars nerds and comic book nerds. If you are a lucky nerd you can turn a nerd passion into a lucrative career. The creator of the Wookiepedia (a wiki fan site that is all things Star Wars) was hired to be the head of the Star Wars continuity and canon division and is currently doing quite well. A dork is not a good thing to be by any means. A dork not only has few marketable skills and less knowledge that either a geek or a nerd, they also generally lack the motivation or skills to even attempt to be marketable. These are the people i've worked with in fast food who seemed to be delusional about how skilled and how smart they were and whould garantee that within five years they were going to create a revolutionary new video game even though they have never shown any actual ability to program, tell a story, or be an artistic designer short of the bantha dung that spews out of their mouths.
The other main factor and most important characteristic that separates a nerd from a geek or a dork is that nerds have social skills. I know you don't believe me but it is true. Despite how nerds are portrayed in movies like Revenge of the Nerds (they were geeks by the way) nerds not only want and attempt to have friends but they can maintain conversations and even relationships. If you don't believe me try talking to a nerd about something, anything. They may be a little socially awkward or quirky but they will be excited to talk to you, funny, clever, and always have something to say about everything because that is their specialty, knowing a lot about a lot. Geeks, however, may want to talk to you and may want to talk to you and may want to interject some of their specialized wisdom into a conversation or explaining things on a technical level, even when the topic is far from technical. A nerd may talk to you about your favorite food but a geek will explain to you, using techincal jargon, how your taste buds send information to the thalamus, tractus solitaries, and the postcentral gyrus releasing hormones like dopamine thus making your chemical reaction to the food a positive one and imprinting in your hippocampus the idea of your favorite food, pizza in this case. A dorks social skills are severely hampered due to trying too hard to fit in or be cool. Dorks might or might not know the technical reason why you like pizza, they might love or hate pizza, but they will always agree with the majority consensus to fit into a group. Dorks also have the added stigma of not being the most hygienic of the groups (due to general lack of motivation) helping to hamper their social skills even further. Why would anyone want to talk to a smelly nerf-herder anyway? Geeks are more hygienic but may wear mismatch clothes or have unkempt hair. Nerds use their exlectic tastes and motivations to come up with their own wacky style, and wacky has become increasingly acceptable in America.
In case further clarification is necessary the members of They Might Be Giants are nerds, Bill Gates is a geek, and Napoleon Dynamite is a dork. Nerds have seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and can name the characters. Geeks have seen the movie hundreds of times, dress up, and are the re-enactors. Dorks know what the movie is, havn't seen the movie but pretend they have, and used to dress up but don't currently for unspecified reasons. You can be a geek who is nerdy about some things, you can be a nerd who is geeky about some things, but, by nature, dorks cannot be nerds or geeks and if a nerd or a geek becomes a dork there is no turning back.
How do I have the authority to say what a nerd is and what it means to be a nerd? If you haven't guessed, I am one. If i wasn't how would I be able to fill my essay with this myriad of pop-culture references? I am the archetypical nerd. I know a lot about a lot of things, most of my knowledge is frivolous, and I am content with knowing I'm right, not proving I'm right. I can hold a conversation, I have dated, and I'm married. I care about my appearance but my hair is still a little wacky. Do I have geeky tendencies? Yes, don't mess with my Star Wars, don't even try. I cannot call myself a geek, though. I am a nerd through and through. I am okay with that and, by now, you should be too. The next time you or someone you know is called a nerd, or the next time you want to call someone a nerd remember the guidelines for what is to really be a nerd. If a person is using nerd in a negative manner you have my permission to call them a dork. I ask that all nerds realize and accept what they are and form a unified force [***man if this guy only knew about nerdfighters***]... and i'll form the head. [***yeah, or john and hank will :)]

i typed this really fast and i know theres a ton of errors in it but i'm not gonna go through and fix them.

formspring.me

2009-12-04T15:51:00.001-06:00

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/PaulSaysThings

BEDN Day 24- Hank Green's "This Machine Pwns Noobs" Album Review

2009-11-24T13:59:00.002-06:00

I dont even want to go and count how many days i've missed for blog every day november. I'm a huge failure at this but I have lots of free time the rest of the week so lets see if I can crank it out the next few days.

Where can I even start? I guess I'll start with my expectations and how they were blown away. While I enjoy Hank's first album, So Jokes, I can't help but feel as if many things about it are missing or undercrafted (is that a word?). Many of the songs on So Jokes are great as they are in their acoustic glory, but then there are songs that I feel are badly recorded that make me want to press the skip button. It seems that all problems I have with So Jokes were looked into for This Machine Pwns Noobs.

I first expected This Machine Pwns Noobs to be in about the same format as So Jokes. I expected to have heard most of the songs and get a few surprises as a result of "album versions" of songs. If you're someone who just cant get into the simple acoustic and quirky lyrics of Hank's songs, you may want to give This Machine Pwns Noobs a bit more of a chance than So Jokes. I expected many of the songs on the album to be simple acoustic versions. I'm not sure why I expected this but I am here to tell you that ALL THE SONGS ARE STUDIO QUALITY VERSIONS! This right away makes the album feel more complete and makes the album overall feel like a huge achievement on Hank's part.

The album starts with the amazing song "DFTBA". You would think that a rap influences song by Hank would be disastrous but it's actually put together very well and the song is extremely catchy.

The next song gets me very excited. "This Isn't Hogwarts" goes into a category that i'm sure MANY people are excited about: Hank making wrock songs. It's easy to connect with this song and it's possibly my favorite on the album.

Next is "The Anglerfish". I don't have much to say on this song because I'm very desensitized to it from listening to it countless times off the DFTBA Vol. 1 Compilation. It's a great song. It seems to get better with age.

The song "I Know" is like a lyrical tornado (that's a compliment). You'll want to listen to it over and over.

Nothing too special to say about "Mules Are So Half Ass". I enjoy the amount of instrumentals on it though.

"Scuzzy Kizoozle Curl" is another one of my favorites on the album (one of my favorite Hank songs overall). The song is fantastic and Hank's accent in the vocals and the fiddle in the background gives the perfect mood that was originally intended for the song.

"Protons and Neutrons" is a song that I wasn't particularly excited about when it came out on YouTube. But this version, while still simple (probably the most simple on the album) has some excellent guitar work in it and makes the song much more than it was before.

"Dead Boy's Girlfriend" is another wrock song on the album. I'm not too fond of it because i'm not really into these kind of slower songs. The lyrics are pretty great though.

"Demolition Derby" is excellent. The fast paced lyrics and the intertwining instruments and backup vocals make for a fantastic song.

I really enjoy "Fathers of the Founding Fathers". My only complaint with this song is that Hank reaches a limit in his vocal range during the chorus and repeats a high pitched part a few times that makes me cringe when I hear it. Other than that the song is still great. It has some really amazing electronic instrumentals in it.

"Ulcerative Colitis" is great. It's got catchy off-beat lyrics that make for lots of replays of the song. This song reminds me A LOT of They Might Be Giants. The song makes me feel sad though because Hank talks about a disease he has and all the money that it's going to cost him.

"I'm Not Edward Cullen" I see as similar to "Dead Boys Girlfriend". I like the lyrics. They seem to be depicting young girl's irrational views towards boys since the Twilight craze.

"Crime Dramas Suck" is a very very catchy song with great instrumentals.

"Jesus Gets Nothing For Christmas" is another song that has a lot of great studio quality

"The Vegetables" is just as you remember it in Hank's video. Funny and ridiculous.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE "Nerdfighteria Island". I have since it first came out. This is a great example of the amazing things that can come from many people working together on something.

"It All Makes Sense In The End" isnt really for me but i'm sure lots of other people like it.

On the whole, this album is fantastic. I'd say its more "male friendly" compared to So Jokes. It's also better than So Jokes for those who do not like low quality music. You can see how much They Might Be Giants has influenced Hank in this album. The packaging of the album is also a high point for me. It comes in a nice digipak, complete with awesome graphics, pictures, A LYRIC BOOKLET!, and some great illustrations for each song.

This album is a must buy.

BEDN Day 21- This isnt working out

2009-11-21T15:02:00.002-06:00

I have something to write about but I dont have the time today to write it.

My twitter account is being weird again.

We've got Thanksgiving duty this year and i'm going to be busy getting stuff ready all week.

Only two days of school this coming week.

I'm buying a guitar on Friday :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

BEDN Day 20- FAIL FAIL FAIL! (and strange occurences)

2009-11-20T10:03:00.004-06:00

I think ive completely missed two days in a row. I'm not entirely sure, i keep losing track of the date.

Ive just watched Charlieissocoollike's new video where he shows you around his room. It freaked me out because a few days ago I recorded a video showing around my room and I was going to start editing it today. This is creepy and it's not the first time it's happened. During "Sixty Second September", Miles..or maybe it's Myles...or...idk (Blade376), put up a video that I had the idea for already. He was yelling at inanimate objects. I had thought about doing a video about that a few days before his came out. It's really creepy when things like this happens.

You may have seen my "Electronic Persona" video (if not it's here:

)

you'll notice that lots of the video and the audio sync up. This was all completely unintentional. I edited the entire video until it was how I wanted it and the target length and then when the video was done I threw in the music last. There are multiple places where I looks like I edited the video according to the music... but I didnt.

This kind of thing happens so often that there's a special word for it.... I actually dont remember what the word is but when I was talking about this with my video art teacher and he told me about it.

Oh crap....

you know how usually when I start with no ideas and I just start writing and it turns into something? welllllllllllll that's not happening for some reason today..... nothing else is coming to mind of the subject.... crap.

I got Hank Green's new album in the mail yesterday. I'm going to listen to it lots more a post a blog reviewing it but what I can tell you instantly is that ITS FREAKING AMAZING! If you even remotely liked his first album then you will easily love the crap out of the new one. It has blown away my expectations.

Im going to just end this blog because I have editing to do and college stuff to take care of today. There was an exit exam I didnt know about and the office didnt tell me that I had a deadline to turn in this application thing so I might have to wait an extra semester before i can graduate :(

BEDN Day 17- Going on tangents actually turn into an overall theme here. Weird.

2009-11-17T19:57:00.003-06:00

November is half over (holy crap! ALREADY?!) so I'm probably supposed to be all excited or something that BEDN is half over. I'm actually to the point where im irritated that November isnt farther along. I thought I was going to enjoy this more than I do but I also thought that I would come up with things to talk about each day. It went SO WELL for the first week or so. About 4 of the blogs or so that i've done this month I really enjoyed writing and seeing how they turned out overall. Then there are those other ones (like this one probably) that are just...ehhh. But, i guess that's part of the writing process. Being an art student I should know that not everything you do will turn out. Sometimes it turns out better than you imagined, sometimes it's just as you imagine, but probably MOST of the time it turns out worse than you imagine.

If you're at a point where you're doing something (writing, art, etc) and things are starting to turn out how you expect/better than you expect half or most of the time, you've probably been doing whatever it is that you do for a long long time and have had lots of practice to get where you art. On the whole, I believe that I do not have the patience for these kinds of things.

In my case, i guess it would be art. (since im an art student I feel obliged to say that). I'm in my 5th semester of art college (by that I mean the art program that the community college :/ ) and I have these kinds of experiences all the time. For the most point, i experience disappointment. There are a few things that I have made in my 5 semesters that I am VERY proud of, the others are basically just practice. Kind of like a learn from your mistakes sort of thing. Of all the stuff ive made at school I only appreciate about 10% of it. And only about 4% of that 10% is stuff that I have blown myself away with (that may not have been the best choice of words).

I guess im sort of opening discussion about this general topic rather than telling you something giving an opinion. What I'm mostly trying to say is that whatever you do, you're ALWAYS going to do things that dont turn out right. This is supposed to happen. Humans are not perfect and we're supposed to learn from mistakes.

Another interesting aspect of this is you might do something that is really important and amazing at the time, and then it becomes useless and lame over time.

A great example of this is YouTube videos.

When I started making videos I was trying to put as much as I knew into them. I started off VERY inexperienced. After a year I got so sick of the baggage that came along with the crappy videos that I made (which seemed really awesome at the time I made them) that I decided to scrap the entire channel and start over with my new channel PaulSaysThings. If you look at my videos in order you can literally see growth and development. I learn new things and try new things with videos all the time. The more time I spend with them the more angle I begin to think about. Something that i've found to be important now that I didnt even think about when I started was to think about my videos from the perspective of the viewer. I had some videos on my old channel that were 5-7 minutes long. When I get on youtube nowadays and see a video in my inbox that's that long, unless I really care about what the person has to say I dont even bother with the video. I wasnt even giving useful or entertaining information in these older videos. I was just talking about my week or whatever. It was horrible. But at the time, i thought it was pretty great.

So you're going to have bad ideas. It'll happen. You need to learn to embrace is and just tough it out. I have problems with this even now. I'll think of a video idea and put it off, and put if off until eventually I dont even like the idea anymore. But it is important to write things, make videos, make art, etc when the inspiration hits you. Dive right in and hope for the best. It (usually) wont always turn out but you will almost always gain SOME kind of knowledge or experience from it.

Im trying to think of a good metaphor for the creative process. I guess I could say its like hunting (?). I've never been hunting but it's like: you go out in hopes of killing many furry aminals. Sometimes you get more than you hoped for, sometimes less. Hunting actually has more chance involved than creating things but you catch my drift.

So maybe it's a good idea to dive into something with no expectations?

Maybe it's good to have NO expectations?

However you do it, if you enjoy it, keep doing it over and over again. Refine your technique. Learn. Train. Hone your skillzzzz. Eventually you may get so good at whatever you do that even the things that turn out bad arent all that bad.

Like Dream Theater's albums. (OH GOD NO DONT MENTION DREAM THEATER AGAIN! NO STOP! NO MORE DREAM THEATER BLOGS!) Their 8th album is my least favorite. However, this doesnt mean that it's not a completely fantastic album compared to other music because they have a refined technique that allows their flaws to still be above par.

I repeated myself alot in this and it's been kind of a weird blog but I hope it was somewhat interesting. By now you may be able to tell that my writing is kind of a start to finish sort of thing where I dive in with a few ideas and little to no expectations and see where it takes me. Writing is probably the easiest thing for me to do while following these guidelines I've talked about. I'm having a weird/hard time explaining myself because im in a self conscious mood because of things that have transpired today.

Even if I didnt like how this blog turned out, I DID gain something from it: I thought of a topic for tomorrow's blog :)

BEDN Day 16- Spoiler Alert!

2009-11-16T15:31:00.001-06:00

this is a video im going to do for Video Art. If you dont want this to spoil it, then dont read it. Either way, you'll probably see the video by the end of the month on youtube. (assuming you're subscribed to me)

[Opening Scene]

(4 people are talking at a party. One is telling a joke)

Person 1: “…and then the bartender says, that’s not a coat rack, that’s my wife!”

(persons 2-4 stare at person 1, unamused)

Announcer: “ARE YOU TIRED OF NOT BEING THE LIFE OF THE PARTY?

“HI, IM BOB LOUDVOICE AND I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT MY NEW PRODUCT: SARCASM! SARCASM ALLOWS YOU TO BE A HUMOROUS RIOT AND A TOTAL ASSHOLE AT THE SAME TIME!”

Person 2: “Did I ever show you a picture of my daughter?”

(person 2 holds out a picture which person 1 takes and looks at. The person in the picture is undoubtedly ugly)

Person 1: “Wow. That’s the most adorable baby I’ve ever seen!”

(person 1, 3 & 4 begin laughing)

Person 3: “Hahahah, wow, you’re such a dick!”

(person 1 continues laughing then stops and turns to the camera)

Person 1: “Thanks sarcasm, for giving me the humorous ability to be a dickhead”

Announcer: “CALL NOW TO ORDER SARCASM AND RECEIVE A FREE BAG FULL OF CRAP THAT YOU DON’T NEED!”

Disembodied voice: “You’ll be the life of the party with sarcasm! Call now to order and receive your free bag of crap! Also from the makers of sarcasm: Irony!”

BEDN Day 14/15- I'm a bad blogger...

2009-11-15T11:54:00.002-06:00

I missed yesterday. I got home late and had to go right to sleep and didn't have time to blog at all. Im going to take the usual masochist way of doing things and say that I will allow myself to be punished. That was pretty much the agreement when I started this so if you have any punishment ideas you can leave them in the comments. Discussion of this will also continue in my next video for 7awesomebookworms on Wednesday.

This morning I did some work. yay! I helped my godfather move stuff around at his work and got $20 after only 1 hour of work! WOO! Unfortunately this $20 will be short lived. Im currently waiting for my friend to call me so that we can go to Guitar Center where I will spend this $20 and a few of it's other $20 friends on a hard case for the guitar that I have yet to purchase. I have a coupon that expires the end of the month so I figure I should just use it anyway and then hopefully i'll get the $200 I need for the guitar at Christmas. That's the plan. Im telling all my family to just give me money. That's what they did last year too when I bought my new bass guitar.

I'm not looking forward to this week.

Tomorrow when I get to class im going to sit there and stare at my project that i've already started and hope that I can think of other things to add to it. Then I need to write a script for my next video art project. We have to do a 30-60 second humorous commercial. At some point this week i'll have to film it as well. I have a history test this week meaning my tuesday class will be easy cuz it's all review and then thursday i'll take the test and then get out of class early. Nothing too exciting going on in my other class.

My friend in the hospital called me last night. He's finally doing better. It looks like he'll be coming back home in the next week or so.

I just went downstairs to move something and OMFG I found my CD that i've been missing for about 3 months. Yesterday I found the remote control to my laptop while cleaning out my car. Who knows why the hell is was under the folding seat in the back but at least i found it. I also vaccumed the inside of my car and washed the outside so that's pretty sweet.

Ive got the chartjackers song stuck in my head for the 5th-ish time. I dont even like the song.

Ive got about 144 pages left in the fantastic Ballads of Suburbia and then i'm excited to start reading Harry, A History. I'll probably re-read King Dork after than and then hope that another book falls into my lap because im out of things to read.

This blog kinda sucks but maybe you think these things in my life are actually exciting.

Meh, probably not.

BEDN Day 13- "blueprints for future homes"

2009-11-13T09:13:00.003-06:00

ok, so I totally ripped off the title from a song by Norma Jean. But I think it's a pretty good title considering in this blog im going to talk about my plans for my place of living when I can finally move out.

This type of thing (moving out) excites me. (Although it took a while before I started REALLY REALLY wanting to do it) So naturally, ive thought about it A LOT!

I have many many plans for what it's going to be like living on my own. It's probably going to be about another year or two at least before I can afford it though :(

First I need to get a job. Meaning I need to put in an application, get a call back for a job interview and actually have them set up a freaking time to interview me. You may think that I've just said that out of experience. Well, I have. Toys R Us called me for an interview and said they'd call back to set up an appointment. I called them about 7 times in the 5 weeks that they didnt call me. The last time I called up there they said "i'd let you talk to the hiring manager but he's actually doing interviews right now." I took this to mean, hey, we did interviews and didnt call you so we dont want you but were not going to fucking tell you. were just going to ignore you till you get so frustrated that you'll leave on your own accord.

Bastards

AAAAAAAAAAANYWAYS.

Living on my own is probably going to be the coolest thing ever. I was kinda freaked out by it for a while but i've gotten to that point where I want to do it and have gracefully accepted that feeling inside of wanting to do it. Hopefully I can channel that into the effort i'll have to put in to get the gears turning to get working on it.

I view living on my own as complete and total control over pretty much aspect of my life. I cant even fathom how awesome this is going to be. Of course i'll be all like, "AHHH, i hate bills, blah blah" but there are going to be so many things to look forward to that it will be worth it.

I guess i'll start at the surface. I have a few (very childish) plans for initial moving in to my own place.

Over the past few years I have bought lots of my own furniture for my room. I get to keep all this furniture. When I got the bookshelf, dvd shelf, dvd rack, tv stand, other shelf and this weird wire cart with shelves on it, I knew that I was making an investment for my future. I think im probably going to leave my TV though. Im going to let my brother have it and get a better one. Im going to try to use this as compensation to my brother because he's not going to be happy when I take the Nintendo 64 with me.

Jeez, i just thought about it and im going to have to buy a bed frame :/

Ok, so ive got some of my organizational furniture out of the way. One thing I plan on doing at some point in time (depending on how much space I have to put this thing in). I want to get a ginormous book shelf. One that's big enough to call the area where it's at "the library" or "the study". The other thing involved with that is that im going to need enough books to actually fill the shelf. It doesnt have to be entirely full but it will look weird w/ giant book shelves and only like one shelf of books. Im hoping that I can acquire a decent amount of books in the next few years. I dont know why but the thought of it just excites me. The idea of bookshelves and different people's bookshelves and ahhhh. I dont even know, its just awesome.

A few other decoration type things that I plan on getting once I have my own place and have room for them: Im going to go to slackers and buy a cardboard cutout of Boba Fett. They also have HUGE posters there so i kinda want to get one of those too.

Ok, enough of the fantasy things, now is when I talk about the awesome life changes I'll get to have.

I am a very organized person. While I let things get out of hand sometimes, i generally like everything to be neat. I strongly believe in the phrase "a place for everything and everything in it's place". It makes so much sense to me. I have a special place for almost everything ever and I put things back where I plan them to be when im done with them. A messy room gives me a headache. A clean room puts me in a very good mood because my environment is not cluttered. The problem with this love of organization is that the rest of my family does not share this love. My mom does to a certain extent but she does not have enough time and energy to keep up with the mess that my dad and my brother can make. They're both really bad at putting things back. My dad leaves dishes and cups all of the house. He'll also put trash anywhere except the trash can. So when I live on my own, EVERYTHING will be clean all the time. If something is a mess, it's going to be my fault in the first place so I wont feel like I have to live in other people's mess. Plus, how messy can one person be living alone as opposed to someone living with three other people.

Ill be able to eat perfectly. I eat about half as healthy as I actually should. We'll, some things that I shouldnt eat just happen to be in the house. When im on my own, ill be able to eat healthier by not buying certain things and only buying the good/healthy ones.

The clean-ness and eating right (not to mention eating on my own time) are the two big things. There are other things like my life schedule will be based around MY life, not other people (other than school and/or work of course). There are other things that I will probably enjoy that I dont even know about yet that I will find out about when I actually start living alone.

Im looking forward to it so much that im afraid im going to like it too much and than possibly hate it when I have to start living with a girlfriend/fiance/wife. So for now, im just not going to think about that yet.

BEDN Day 12- Today was argh

2009-11-12T19:16:00.002-06:00

today started pretty cool. Had a test first class so it got out early.

In bowling I got 138 and then 149 (a new high score!)

History was easy and stuf.

Went to hang out w/ my friends today.

But my twitter account keeps getting locked. My password was stolen and I keep trying to fix it. It's really annoying. I cant get on or anything. I hope it works out

I know my blog has been bleh for the past few days but Im just not able to do it as usual. Things happen.

I got Harry, A History today and I cant wait to read it so im going to go finish this other book.

BEDN Day 11- Yesterday's situation to the max

2009-11-11T21:21:00.001-06:00

Pretty much not available to do lots of writing. Today is both the 4 year anniversary of me playing bass guitar and the 2 or 3 (cant remember :O) year anniversary of my grandma's death. Really weird because my mom spent the day in the hospital with my brother seeing a specialist.

Yes. Today was pretty cool tho.

I made this awesome video that you should watch starting at 2 minutes into it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuh8R2BuBW0

BEDN Day 10- Ok, so sometimes things get real...

2009-11-10T22:23:00.002-06:00

Like this project. It's obvious that it will be nearly impossible to decently blog every day in a given number of days.

Today, my brother is sleeping in front of my computer. I cant wake him up because he has trouble falling asleep. So i cant sit in my domain and think for a while and I have to use this computer. It's not very good for deep thinking stuffs.

Today I got super inspiration for #nanowrimo 2010 out of nowhere while sitting in the hall at school. I wrote two pages of things I came up with including about 2 major plot points but Im looking for more overall theme. see, those of you that are doing nano probably think that im putting too much thought and effort into it already. but the way I see it, the more I play it out like this the more comfortable I will be and hopefully I'll easily glide through it.

Anyways, this is all I can manage today. At least it's something. Im going to go read for 1000000000 hours and re-read "ballads of suburbia" by stephanie kuehnert and be all excited because it's amazing.

BEDN Day 9- Writing For the Sake of Writing/ NaNo 2010

2009-11-09T19:30:00.004-06:00

I dont really have anything to talk about today but the reason why Im doing BEDN is because I didnt think I was ready for NaNoWriMo. So this whole BEDN thing is basically NaNo prep. It's writing for the sake of writing and for the sake of gaining writing confidence and credentials. Letting the writing flow and flow and when it doesnt flow, FORCING it to flow until it hurts!

In a way I guess you could say im forcing it now. Maybe somewhere along the line here ill think of something on my mind that I wish to speak about.

I guess I could talk about NaNoWriMo 2010 and how I'm getting really excited for it. At first, when I heard about NaNo I was like "that's something that Im totally not interested in at all". Yet somehow ive transformed my mood about it (tragically it was until a good few days into November). I actually wish I could have talked myself into toughing it out and doing NaNo this year. In a way I guess Im glad I still didnt do it because I wasnt/am not (?) nearly prepared for it. I know you may think that I am over thinking the whole NaNo thing. Chances are, you're right. If there's one thing i know how to do, its over think things and panic about them.

So basically I have an entire year to set up a plot for NaNo next year. This may sound like Ive given myself way too much time and it seems completely ridiculous and that i'm going to slack off till the last minute but honestly, ill need a good amount of time to think about it. Ive actually thought about it a lot already. The reason I need so much time to do things like develop plots is because my mind words very weird-ly. I get super impassable creative blocks all the freaking time. For example, right now for my plot so far i've come up with some basis for a few characters and a few good events that I want to include. These were easy to come up with because they are all from my personal experiences and I think they have profound meaning or will be really cool when I put them in novel form.

Other than those few things I can't think of ANYTHING else for a plot. Everything I think about is all from personal experience. Once again, my amazing powers of over thinking have taken place and I cant just think outside the box for once and come up with something of a plot that is not based entirely on my personal life. I dont want to write about my personal life that much because all the novel-esque things that I think about with personal events are really agnsty and poopy.

I dont want to write a depressing Catcher type novel, but those are the only things I can come up with. I do enjoy that kind of writing though. Theres a special poetic kind of quality to establishing misery in quirky ways. For example, right now im reading this fantastic book "Stoner and Spaz". The main character has cerebral palsy and every time he mentions something about his mangled form, its depressing, the character is trying to be bitchy about it, but the words used to write about it give it a sort of adoring quality. Maybe I can write a depressing type novel if I just know how to do it right.

I guess I just need to come up with a good conflict or a good something that a character can overcome. I really need to get like a main like, a starting point, a turning point, and an ending point. Sounds easy right? Well nothing comes out. I have this same problem when I make art at school.

Come to think of it, NaNoWriMo is a good thing for me even if the only thing I get out of it is learning to deal with over thinking things.

Ok, for my own personal benefit im going to write out a few things that I have figured out.

-The writing will be in first person. That im sure of. Not sure why but It just feels right so im going with that.

-The main character will be male because I dont think I could write first person and have a girl for a main character because I am not a girl so I dont know how to depict thoughts inside of a girl's head.

-Many personal events will be used to influence the events of the novel. Such as my experience with drug use (not experience of using them myself, but knowing people who do and being in that environment with them). I have not yet decided if the main character will be doing these drugs or not. It's something that I enjoy reading about though- hearing the characters describe the effects.

Other things that ive experienced that will be included are some of the dramatic situations I had in gradeschool. For example, I found out near the end of 8th grade that lots of people thought I was going to shoot up the school. I already turned this idea into a successful art project so im going to milk it further for character development.

Im also thinking about writing about my current experience with my friend in the mental hospital. Its a very strange situation. As my friend was having a panic attack in his front yard I looked at my friend (who happens to be an aspiring writer, something that I dont really think of myself as) and we both mentioned how this will be great inspiration for writing in the future. I figure a year from now, next november, i'll have even more on the subject to write about because more will unfold. It may even unfold to the point where I wont want to talk about it in writing anymore.

- the people I know are so defined within themselves that MANY of them are going to be making appearances as novel characters.

-i am very interested with the concept of a person's perceptions inside their own head (of themselves, life, how the world works, interacting with others) versus those perceptions from the view of other people's perceptions. One time I got so caught up in the idea I wrote a page of a screen play of sorts about a movie/video/tv show/whatever where most of the dialogue was just inner monologue.

The idea of multiple viewpoints on a given subject fascinates me. The fact that you can think about something one way and someone can come along and easily put just as much thought into it as you do yet come up with an entirely different understanding of the subject.

that's about it. at least all the ideas that came to mind when i tried to recall my list of ideas.

see? i do have ideas. good ones (at least I think so). I just need a nice way to kind of place them all together. and THAT is precicely what is going to keep my mind buzzing for the next year. Im hoping that eventually it will all just kind of work out and I wont have to put my brain through a shredder to make it my bitch so it can come up with good plot ideas.

wow, that blog actually kinda turned out ok.... weird.

BEDN Day 8- How I met Muse but didnt know who they were :(

2009-11-08T16:18:00.002-06:00

The title is mostly self explanitory. However, it raises all questions as to how it went down so here's the story:

We were at this place called "Fast Lane", they sell old cars. My dad was looking at this really cheap 1950 Ford that he was thinking of buying. While we were there there were these three guys walking around looking at stuff. We ended up running into them and while i was close up to them I noticed that they seemed familiar but I couldnt quite figure it out. They stared at me with this weird look (which I would later find out was a look of "do you know who we are and that is why you're staring at us?). My dad decided to get the car. While we were in the office finalizing everything we got to talking about the three weird young guys walking around because the owner of the place said that they each bought a car. He said that they were some band from the UK called Muse and i was like OH! THAT'S WHERE IVE SEEN THEM BEFORE! (they all drove mini coopers btw, it was pretty rad)

I had just seen their video for "Hysteria" a few days/weeks before this. I had never known about them until that video because that's when they made some headway in the US. So I went home and looked up some of their music, but my my naive 14 year old self listened to their high vocals and said they suck. Now, years later and with a better sense of good music, i really love Muse and have major regret for not talking to them while i was in their presence.

What are the chances of running into internationally famous people from the UK in a highly unsignificant location in the dead center of the US? Weird.

BEDN Day 7- Movie Collection

2009-11-07T10:21:00.002-06:00

This is kinda like yesterday's blog. I get people asking about my DVD collection, here it is in no order other than how they're sitting on my shelf:

Mean Creek

Full Metal Jacket

Stranger Than Fiction

Hot Rod

Office Space

Mr. Woodcock (its signed by Billy Bob Thorton!)

Grandma's Boy

Shoot 'Em Up

Little Nicky

Knocked Up

Sling Blade

A Simple Plan

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Dazed and Confused

SLC Punk

Hamlet 2

Snakes on a Plane

Kung Pow!

Napoleon Dynamite

Art School Confidential

Hot Fuzz

Charlie Bartlett

Half Baked

Pineapple Express

Van Helsing

Anchorman

Aeon Flux

Across the Universe

The Big Lebowski

Reign of Fire

Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

Lords of Dogtown

The Fast and the Furious

300

Daredevil

Wanted

Zoolander

Death Race

Iron Man

Team America

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Resident Evil: Degeneration

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

American History X

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Shawshank Redemption

Austin Powers International Man of Mystery

Austin Powers the Spy Who Shagged Me

Austin Powers Goldmember

Superbad

I Am Legend

Transformers

Juno

Finding Nemo

Super Toopers

Coraline

Edward Scissorhands

Meet the Parents

Meet the Fockers

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Monty Python's Life of Brian

Clerks

Clerks II

Primal Fear

Fight Club

Saw

Saw II

Saw III

Saw IV

Saw V

Child's Play 2

Child's Play 3

Bride of Chucky

Seed of Chucky

Dawn of the Dead (original)

Dawn of the Dead (remake)

Land of the Dead

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Death Proof

Planet Terror

Silent Hill

Final Destination

Final Destination 2

Final Destination 3

Friday the 13th (original)

Friday the 13th (remake)

The Grudge

The Grudge 2

My Bloody Valentine

28 Days Later

28 Weeks Later

Sweeney Todd

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters For DVD

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Volume 1

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Volume 2

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Volume 3

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Volume 4

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Volume 5

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Volume 6

Metalocalypse Season 1

Metalocalypse Season 2

The Brak Show Volume 1

The Brak Show Volume 2

Tom Goes to the Mayor

Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! Season 1

Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! Season 2

The Office Season 1

The Office Season 2

The Office Season 3

The Office Season 4

Chappelle's Show Season 1

Chappelle's Show Season 2

Invader Zim Volume 1

Invader Zim Volume 2

Invader Zim Volume 3

Die Hard

Die Hard 2

Die Hard 3

Die Hard 4

Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters 2

The Matrix

The Matrix Reloaded

The Matrix Revolutions

Wayne's World

Wayn'es World 2

Harry Potter 1

Harry Potter 2

Harry Potter 3

Harry Potter 4

Harry Potter 5

X-Men

X-Men The Last Stand

Underworld Rise of the Lycans

Underworld

Underworld Evolution

Pirates of the Caribbean

Pirates of the Caribbean 2

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

Spiderman

Spiderman 2

Spiderman 3

Batman Begins

The Dark Knight

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

LOTR The Fellowship of the Ring (4 disk)

LOTR The Two Towers (4 disk)

LOTR The Return of the King (4 disk)

Red Vs. Blue Season 1

Red Vs. Blue Season 2

Red Vs. Blue Season 3

Red Vs. Blue Season 4

Red Vs. Blue Season 5

Red Vs. Blue Bonus Content

Star Wars I

Star Wars II

Star Wars III

Star Wars IV

Star Wars V

Star Wars VI

Star Wars Bonus Material

Star Wars Clone Wars Season 1

Star Wars Clone Wars Season 2

Star Wars The Clone Wars

Fanboys

Blade

Blade II

Blade trinity

Blade: House of Chthon

Mean Girls

Shriek 2

Dane Cook Vicious Circle
Hawthorne Heights This Is Who We Are

As I Lay Dying This Is Who We Are

Coheed and Cambria The Last Supper

Underoath 777

Tenacious D The Complete Masterworks 2

Dream Theater Chaos In Motion

Slipknot Inside the Nine

The Blue Man Group The Complex Rock Tour

SNL Best of Will Ferrell

SNL Best of Will Ferrell 2

SNL Best of Chris Farley

SNL Best of Mike Myers

SNL Best of Adam Sandler

Borat

Tenacious D The Pick of Destiny

Talladega Nights

The Wedding Crashers

Dickie Roberts

A Knight's Tale

Beverly Hills Ninja

Robot Chicken Star Wars

Happy Gilmore

Billy Madison

Northern Exposure Season 1

Northern Exposure Season 2

No Country for Old Men

The Italian Job

Casino Royale

Quantum of Solace

The Pursuit of Happyness

Disturbia

Secondhand Lions

The Prestige

Crash

Stand and Deliver

The Illusionist

BEDN Day 6- My CD Collection

2009-11-06T11:33:00.009-06:00

I get lots of people on YouTube asking me to do a video showing my entire CD collection. I dont really want to look like an asshole showing off all those CDs and the video would take forever to do. So instead, here's a list of all of them.

Im going to write them in the order they are on my shelf. They're in racks according to genre and some of them are a bit mixed up. Keep in mind lots of them are copied, I have only ever sold one of my CDs so I dont actually listen to lots of these anymore. Some of these are my brother's CDs and I REALLY dont listen to some of those. Some things are grouped against the alphabetical ordering. For example I have Slipknot and Stone Sour together as well as System of a Down and Serj Tankian and Say Anything and Two Tounges. Anyway here they are:

Metal:

3 Inches of Blood: Fire Up The Blades

AC/DC: Back In Black

AC/DC: Live

Adema: (self titled)

All Shall Perish: The Price of Existence

All That Remains: Overcome

The Autumn Offering: Embrace The Gutter

As I Lay Dying: Frail Words Collapse

As I Lay Dying: Shadows Are Security

As I Lay Dying: An Ocean Between Us

Atreyu: The Curse

Atreyu: A Deathgrip On Yesterday

Atreyu: Lead Sails Paper Anchor

Avenged Sevenfold: Sounding The Seventh Trumpet

Avenged Sevenfold: Waking The Fallen

Avenged Sevenfold: City of Evil

Avenged Sevenfold: (self titled)

Bullet For My Valentine: Hand of Blood

Bullet For My Valentine: The Poison

Bullet For My Valentine: Scream Aim Fire

The Black Dahlia Murder: Unhallowed

The Black Dahlia Murder: Defluration

Black Tide: Light From Above

Black Sabbath: We Sold Our Soul For Rock N Roll

Buckethead: The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell

Buckethead & Friends: Enter the Chicken

Born of Osiris: The New Reign

Bring Me The Horizon: Count Your Blessings

Chevelle: This Type of Thinking Could Do Us In

Chevelle: Vena Sera

Cradle of Filth: Lovecraft & Witch Hearts

Cradle of Filth: Nymphetamine

Cradle of Filth: Thornography

CKY: Infiltrate Destroy Rebuild

Despised Icon: The Ills of Modern Man

Dethklok: The Dethalbum

Dethklok: Dethalbum II

Disturbed: The Sickness

Disturbed: Believe

Disturbed: Ten Thousand Fists

Disturbed: Indestructable

Dragonforce: Inhuman Rampage

Dream Theater: When Dream and Day Unite

Dream Theater: Images and Words

Dream Theater: Awake

Dream Theater: Falling Into Infinity

Dream Theater: Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory

Dream Theater: Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

Dream Theater: Train of Thought

Dream Theater: Octavarium

Dream Theater: Systematic Chaos

Dream Theater: Black Clouds & Silver Linings

Dream Theater: Live Scenes From New York

Dream Theater: ScoreDream Theater: Greatest Hit (...and 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs)

John Petrucci: Suspended Animation

Liquid Tension Experiment: Liquid Tension Experiment

Liquid Tension Experiment: Liquid Tension Experiment 2

Drowning Pool: Sinner

Evanescence: Fallen

Evanescence The Open Door

Extreme: Pornograffitti

Five Finger Death Punch: The Way Of The Fist

Godsmack: (self titled)

Godsmack: Awake

Godsmack: Faceless

Godsmack: IV

Guns N Roses: Appetite For Destruction

HIM: Dark Light

Headbanger's Ball

Headbanger's Ball Volume 2

Headbanger's Ball: The Revenge

Hellyeah: (self titled)

Iron Maiden: The Essential

Judas Priest: The Essential

Job For A Cowboy: Doom

Job For A Cowboy: Genisis

Job For A Cowboy: Ruination

Killswitch Engage: As Daylight Dies

Kittie: Spit

Kittie: Until The End

Kiss: Gold

Korn: (self titled debut)

Korn: Follow The Leader

Korn: Take A Look In The Mirror

Korn: See You On The Other Side

Korn: (self titled)

Korn: Greatest Hits Vol. 1

Lamb of God: New American Gospel

Lamb of God: As The Palaces Burn

Lamb of God: Ashes of the Wake

Lamb of God: Sacrament

Lamb of God: Wrath

Linkin Park: Hybrid Theory

Linkin Park: Reanimation

Linkin Park: Meteora

Linkin Park: Live in Texas

Marilyn Manson: Lest We Forget: The Best of

Mastodon: Remission

Mastodon: Leviathan

Mastodon: Blood Mountain

Mastodon: Crack The Skye

Metallica: Master of Puppets

Metallica: (self titled black album)

Metallica: S&M

Norma Jean: Redeemer

Paul Gilbert: Get Out Of My Yard

Pantera: Cowboys From Hell

POD: Satellite

POD: Payable On Death

Rage Against The Machine (i just made a mix of all their singles)

Slipknot: (self titled)

Slipknot: Iowa

Slipknot: Vol. 3 The Subliminal Verses

Slipknot: All Hope Is Gone

Slipknot: 9.0 Live

Stone Sour: (self titled)

Stone Sour: Come What(ever) May

Static X: Wisconsin Death Trip

Static X: Machine

Static X: Shadow Zone

Static X: Start A War

Static X: Cannibal

Static X: Cult of Static

Static X: Cannibal Killers Liv

eStatic X: Beneath... Between... Beyond...

Sonic Syndicate: Love and Other Disasters

Suicide Silence: The Cleansing

Suicide Silence: No Time To Bleed

System of a Down: (self titled)

System of a Down: Toxicity

System of a Down: Steal This Album

System of a Down: Mezmerize

System of a Down: Hypnotize

Serj Tankian: Elect The Dead

Underoath: The Changing of Times

Underoath: They're Only Chasing Safety

Underoath: Define The Great Line

Underoath: Lost in the Sound of Separation

Underoath: Survive/Kaleidoscope (live)

Whitechapel: This Is Exile

Stuff that people would call "emo" or "scene" or "screamo" or "hardcore" music or popular rock that's closely related to that kind of stuff. Basically you're very likely to see these bands on Warped Tour. Out of all my CDs, this group probably has the most that I dont really listen to anymore:

18 Visions: (self titled)

A Static Lullaby: (self titled)

Aiden: Nightmare Anatomy

AFI: Sing The Sorrow

AFI: Decemberunderground

The Almost: Southern Weather

Bayside: The Walking Wounded

Blessthefall: His Last Walk

Chiodos: Alls Well That Ends Well

Chiodos: Bone Palace Ballet

The Devil Wears Prada: Dear Love, A Beautiful Discord

Fall Out Boy: Take This To Your Grave

Fall Out Boy: From Under The Cork Tree

Fall Out Boy: Infinity On High

Family Force 5: Business Up Front Part in the Back

Family Force 5: Dance or Die

From First To Last: Dear Diar, My Teen Angst Has a Body Count

From First To Last: Heroine

From First To Last: (self titled)

Hawthorne Heights: The Silence in Black and White

Hawthorne Heights: If Only You Were Lonely

Lost Prophets: Start Something

Lost Prophets: Liberation Transmission

The Matches: E. Von Dahl Killed The Locals

The Matches: Decomposer

Madina Lake: From Them Through Us To You

My Chemical Romance: Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge

My Chemical Romance: The Black Parade

Paramore: All We Know Is Failing

Paramore: Riot

Panic! At The Disco: A Fever You Can't Sweat Out

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus: Don't You Fake It

Say Anything: ... Is A Real Boy

Say Anything: In Defense of the Genre

Say Anything: (self titled)

Two Tongues: (self titled)

Senses Fail: Let it Enfold You

Senses Fail: Still Searching

Senses Fail: Life is Not a Waiting Room

Silverstein: When Broken is Easily Fixed

Silverstein: Discovering the Waterfront

Silverstein: Arrivals & Departures

Simple Plan: No Pads, No Helmets, Just Balls

Story of the Year: Page Avenue

Story of the Year: The Black Swan

Taking Back Sunday: Where You Want To Be

Taking Back Sunday: Tell All Your Friends

Taking Back Sunday: Louder Now

The Used: Lies for the Liars

Regular ass rock, alternative rock, classic rock, popular rock, etc:

3 Days Grace: (self titled)

3 Days Grace: One X

3 Doors Down: The Better Life

3 Doors Down: Away From the Sun

Avril Lavigne: Let Go

Avril Lavigne: Under My Skin

The Beatles: Abbey Road

The Beatles: The White Album

The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Breaking Benjamin: Saturate

Breaking Benjamin: We Are Not Alone

Breaking Benjamin: Phobia

Breaking Benjamin: Dear Agony

Boston: Greatest Hits

Coheed & Cambria: In Keeping Secrets of Silence Earth III

Coheed & Cambria: Good Appolo I'm Burning Star IV, Vol. 1 From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness

Coheed & Cambria: No World For Tomorrow

The Doors: Greatest Hits

Eve 6: (self titled)

Flyleaf: (self titled)

Flogging Molly: Drunken Lullabies

Flogging Molly: Whiskey on a Sunday

Hoobastank: (self titled)

Hoobastank: The Reason

Incubus: S.C.I.E.N.C.E.

Incubus: Make Yourself

Incubus: Morning View

Jet: Get Born

The Killers: Hot Fuss

Led Zeppelin: III

Led Zeppelin: IV

Led Zeppelin: Greatest Hits- Early Days, Latter Days (2 disk)

Ludo: (self titled)

Ludo: Broken Bride

Ludo: You're Awful, I Love You

Michael Jackson: Number Ones

Modern Day Zero: Coming Up For Air

The Mountain Goats: Tallahassee

The Mountain Goats: We Shall All Be Healed

The Mountain Goats: Jack and Faye

The Mountain Goats: Nine Black Poppies

The Mountain Goats: Heretic Pride

Muse: Absolution

Muse: Black Holes & Revelations

Mute Math: (self titled)

Nickelback: Silver Side Up

Nickelback: The Long Road

Papa Roach: The Paramour Sessions

Pink Floyd: The Wall

Queen: Greatest Hits

Ra: From One

Red Hot Chili Peppers: Greatest Hits

Red Hot Chili Peppers: Stadium Arcadium

Relient K: MmmHmm

Saliva: Blood Stained Romance

Seether: Karma and Effect

Seether: Finding Beauty in Negative Places

Shinedown: Leave a Wisper

Shinedown: Us and Them

Shinedown: The Sound of Madness

Staind: 14 Shades of Grey

Smashing Pumpkins: Greatest Hits

Smashing Pumpkins: Zeitgeist

Sugarcult: Palm Trees and Power Lines

Yellowcard: Ocean Avenue

Yellowcard: Lights & Sounds

Weezer: (the blue album)

Wolfmother: (self titled)

Punk/Pop Punk/Ska:

Bad Religion: Stranger Than Fiction

Bad Religion: The Empire Strikes First

Blink 182: Dude Rance

Blink 182: Enema of the State

Blink 182: Take off Your Pants and Jacket

Blink 182: (self titled)

Boxcar Racer: (self titled)

+44: When Your Heart Stops Beating

The Clash: The Essential

The Dresden Dolls: (self titled)

The Germs: (GI)

Green Day: Dookie

Green Day: Insomniac

Green Day: Nimrod

Green Day: International Super Hits

Green Day: American Idiot

Good Charlotte: (self titled)

Good Charlotte: The Young and the Hopeless

Good Charlotte: The Chronicles of Life and Death

Good Charlotte: Good Morning Revival

Jawbreaker: Dear You

Jawbreaker: Bivouac

Nirvana: Bleach

Nirvana: Nevermind

Nirvana: Incesticide

The Offspring: Greatest Hits

The Ramones: Greatest Hits

Rancid: (self titled 1993)

Rancid: Let's Go

Rancid: ... And Out Come the Wolves

Rancid: Life Won't Wait

Rancid: (self titled 2000)

Rancid: B Sides and C Sides

Rancid: Let The Dominoes Fall

Reel Big Fish: Turn the Radio Off

Rise Against: The Unraveling

Rise Against: Revolutions Per Minute

Rise Against: Siren Song of the Counter Culture

Rise Against: The Sufferer and the Witness

Rise Against: Appeal To Reason

Misfits: (self titled)

NOFX: The War on Errorism

NOFX: I Hear They Suck Live

NOFX: The Greatest Songs Ever Written By Us

Screeching Weasel: Weasel Mania (greatest hits)

Sex Pistols: Nevermind the Bollocks

Sixer: Beautiful Trash

Sum 41: All Killer No Filler

Sum 41: Does This Look Infected?

Sum 41: Chuck

Sum 41: Underclass Hero

Social Distortion: (self titled)

Stuff I havnt found a category for and internet/youtube/wrock stuff:

Tub Ring: Zoo Hypothesis

Tub Ring: The Great Filter

Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny

Tenacious D: (self titled)

Flobots: Fight With Tools

The Bloodhound Gang: Heafty Fine

Insane Clown Possee: The Great Milenko

Mindless Self Indulgence: Tight

Mindless Self Indulgence: Alienating Our Audience (live)

Mindless Self Indulgence: Despierta Los Ninos

Mindless Self Indulgence: Another Mindless Ripoff

Mindless Self Indulgence: Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy

Mindless Self Indulgence: You'll Rebel To Anything

Mindless Self Indulgence: If

Mindless Self Indulgence: If Remixes (3 disk)

The Moaning Myrtles: Toilet Humor

Justin Finch-Fletchley: And The Half Blood Pizza

Lauren Fairweather: Devil's Snare

Hank Green: So Jokes

Hank Green: This Guitar Pwns Noobs (i dont have it yet but I ordered it)

Driftless Pony Club: Expert

DFTBA Records Vol. 1 Compilation

Dr. Noise: Silent Echoes

I have some random songs on my computer that arent full albums as well.

BEDN Day 5- Different Today

2009-11-05T20:10:00.002-06:00

Im still going to write a blog but im not going to post it. My friend is in the hospital right now. They're not sure but it's pretty much schizophrenia. At this point he could either snap out of it after a few days or just stay like this. I cant stop thinking about it.

BEDN Day 4- I swear no Dream Theater this time. This is about telemarketers

2009-11-04T19:18:00.003-06:00

One of the things I cant stand the most is telemarketers. We seem to have more than usual call our house ALL THE FREAKING TIME! It just really annoys me because the ones that we usually get are just asking for donations. There are many reasons why I hate telemarketers.

1. If it's someone doing a survey, they'll just start telling you about the survey and make you sit on the phone for 5 whole minutes, THEN explain that you need to be 18 to do the survey and you have to hang up. I had this problem many times before I was 18. Now if I say hello and they just keep talking and dont let me speak I hang up on them.

2. They call at the most horrible times. It's always during something that I dont really want to stop doing to go answer the phone. This is especially bad when we get a few different ones calling in the same day.

3. They pronounce my last name wrong almost every time. It's Huber. They pronounce it "Hubber". The "e" at the end give the "u" a different sound. It's vowel grammar, go learn some.

4. They often do not ASK for someone even though they're looking to talk to someone in particular. If I answer the phone, many times the telemarketer will assume that I am my dad.

5. The times of day they call at do NOT make sense. One called today at 8:20 am. My mom had just left for work. Here's how the situation went. Notice that many of the other things I mentioned already happen within the same phone call.

I was about to leave the house to go to school when the phone rang. I picked it up and said hello. The telemarketer started talking to me thinking I was my dad in a country accent (I dont like hicks). I told him that my dad wasnt there and that he was WORKING because it was 8:20 in the freaking morning. He asked for my mom. I said no, they both work, this is way too early.

6. When my parents DO happen to pick up when they call they tell them that we dont want to donate to whatever they're collecting for. But they KEEP CALLING CONTINUOUSLY!

Reasons to actually like telemarketers:

It's very fun to mess with them. Ive noticed that many of them use a compute to dial the phone number. If you've ever picked up the phone and said hello and then heard a pause followed by a noise like someone is picking up a phone, this is what's going on. The computer tells them someone has picked up and they connect with the call. Many times ill just breathe really hard into the reciever and this will trigger the computer and they'll pick up. There are many things one can do at this point:

-Most of the time they'll say "Hello" and ill just sit there and make no noise and see how long they stay on.

-You can mess with them by doing things like talking in an accent, asking them weird questions or pretending like you cant understand what they're trying to tell you.

-If you're in a really bad mood when one of these people calls you I find it acceptable to go off on them. I understand that they are doing a job to try and make a living, but something about this field of work I find repulsive. Not to mention if it's a company or organization that has kept calling over and over. If i notice the same thing on the caller ID a few days in a row, i let them know very rudely that they need to stop calling, especially at times during the day when people work.

Try different techniques when messing with telemarketers. My brother has some good ones. He's pretended to be Japanese, pretended to be violent and insane. Made strange animal noises over the phone, etc.

One of the really great ones that ive done is if you say hello and the telemarketer DOES ask for someone, tell them to hold on and then put the phone down. Go do something else and come back later to see if they're still on. One time I made a sandwich and came back and the telemarketer was still there and I told him, oh, im sorry he's not here.

You probably think im a dick for doing these kinds of things but somehow I dont feel bad for doing these things at all. Probably because these people really annoy me and i never have to see them and i will never have another encounter with them ever.

BEDN Day 3- Continuing Yesterday's Dream Theater Blog...

2009-11-03T21:29:00.003-06:00

I know you're probably thinking that im about to do something very boring but I want to talk about the opposite side of Dream Theater that I talked about yesterday. On the surface, Dream Theater seems like a fast heavy metal band but that's probably not even the majority of their music. It 50% of their music at it's very most but it's probably lower than that.

Dream Theater has a soft side where they show talents other than fast and technical. Their first few albums while sounding a bit more 80's hair metal-ish actually convey a LOT more emotion and mood than you would think of coming from a band that plays the music that I showed in yesterday's blog.

Dream Theater believes that nothing should be holding them back in their music. They keep this in mind and never play anything strictly because it sounds like something "their genre" would play.

The best way to describe my points is to sample more videos. At least this is more of a watching/listening blog that reading just like yetsterday :)

Please excuse some of the cheesiness this video may give off. This is the first slow song on technically their first album that was released very early 90's and still had an 80's power ballad influence. I used to HATE this song when I heard it but there are MANY things about it that I really like now that I took the time to appreciate the musicianship of everything.

Here is a FANTASTIC song off their newest (10th) album "Black Clouds and Silver Linings". The song is about writer's block:

Here is a heavier yet still very slow and chill song. This song comes from their 9th album, Systematic Chaos, which has a futuristic type theme. This is one of the songs that most newcomers to Dream Theater will not enjoy. You have to get used to Dream Theater's singer. At first I hated the crap out of him, but after a while you start to accept him and then realize how talented he is and suddenly cant picture this music with any other vocalist.

So ALL of their songs arent insanely long. I think I probably exaggerated a bit yesterday when I mentioned the length. Most of their newer stuff IS quite long thought but you can quickly adapt to the songs because the cinematic type experience of the music carries you through the songs. This song is a good mixture of slow jam with a few heavier riffs in it (which start to pick up at around 2:45). The mood of this song is very awesome. This is one of my top 5 favorite Dream Theater songs. This song is a very good example of the kind of adventuristic side of Dream Theater's style:

Here's a slow yet very happy type of song with some great piano work:

If you watched that video that I posted on yesterday's blog about Liquid Tension experiment, this is a little more that kind of style. This is one of my top 3 favorite Dream Theater songs. Around 1:40 it starts to get this 90's club feel to it. Ignore the keyboard player moving around weird. He's a different guy that was only on one of their albums. This was off their 4th's album, Falling Into Infinity. The whole album has a Pink Floyd kind of feel to it which REALLY stands out in the solo that starts at 4:25.

This last song here is another one of my top 3 Dream Theater songs. It's from their second album, Images and Words, which many think of as their debut album because their true first album was really bad and has a different singer that gave the band a terrible overly done 80's sound. The vocals are very impressive in this song. Also, if you love 80's videos in the first place, you will enjoy this:

So I hope that you can now see the two kinds of Dream Theater. This blog is more about their roots and more meaningful type of music (even though most of it is very thoughtful and intelligent). I thought I would lay out their complete story so as not to give the wrong impression of them because I thought differently of them when I first listened to them as well.

BEDN Day 2- Why I Love Dream Theater So Much

2009-11-02T19:16:00.000-06:00

Last winter I met (technically re-met. I knew him when I was little but hadn't seen him in like 10 years) one of my good friends Jeremiah. He was really into this band called Dream Theater. I heard him talk about it a little bit and eventually I saw a live DVD he had. I was blown away by the sheer amount of skill these musicians have.

I didnt pay too great of attention to them right away though. After a while I got into listening to the music with him as he played video games and stuff. We discussed the various albums they have and I decided which ones I wanted to check out first.

I started by listening to their third album, Awake, first because that was the only one he had other than their greatest hits album. He'd lost most of them over the years. I got SO INCREDIBLY INTO IT! I was also constantly looking up the band on youtube and stuff and seeing the technical abilities these musicians are capable of.

For a good reference point, here's a video of a song of theirs that they only play live. Its called "Instrumedley" as its a mash up of instrumental parts from various songs they've written:

The album that I first had by them is a bit 80's sounding and while is known as one of their best albums, still doesnt showcase everything they're capable of.

There is SO MUCH to get into with this band. They have 10 studio albums, one EP and quite a few live albums. They also have dozens of side and solo projects, the biggest one being Liquid Tension Experiment, a jazzy rock band that's like Dream Theater but with a completely different feel:

Their 10 different albums each have their own feel, mood and theme to them. This wide range of sounds plus the deep storytelling of the lyrics allows Dream Theater to be THE BAND for anyone to obsess over. There are so many things to just kind of think about with their music. Lots of it is interconnected as well. For example, the drummer, Mike Portnoy, used to be an alcoholic and made one song on each of their 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th album that span over the 12 step program in Alcoholics Anonymous. The last and first songs of sequential albums 5-8 are connected starting with the last song on the 5th album, connecting through the first on the 6th, last on the 6th to first one the 7th and so on. The 8th album, Octavarium (8, octa, get it?) starts and ends with the same note hit on a piano making the whole album becoming one continuous circle. It's fitting with the album cover which can be seen here along with one VERY IMPRESSIVE song from that album:

So many little things like this keep one interested in the band and wanting to find out all these fun little details about them.

Having acquired all 10 studio albums my addiction has reached its full potential. I have severe trouble picking favorite songs or even a favorite album because it's all so equally good that I feel like im cheating one album if I were to pick something over it.

Having so much material is also one of the ways im able to stay so interested in the band. You cant ever get tired of the music because theres so much of it and you can constantly switch between their abundance of songs. The other thing is that an average Dream Theater song is about 7-12 minutes. There is so much to just one song that it's nearly impossible to get tired of one of their songs.

The biggest thing about this band is their skill. They are so completely techincally brilliant. They've all graduated fancy music schools. As my friend says "I believe that a musicians job is to fuck the shit out of the instrument that they're playing." That's exactly what every one of them does. Each member of the band can easily be listed as one of the top 5 musicians for their respective instruments. In my opinion the drummer could be in the top 3 and their keyboard player is easily the number one most highly skilled keyboard player of all time.

Their singer can hit a high F#. Its quite impressive:

Their drummer is unlike anything I've ever seen before. To truly get him you have to SEE him play. The way he plays is very precise and almost roboticly perfect:

Their bass player plays a 6 STRING BASS! So you can imagine how great he must be:

And their guitarist plays very uniquely and completely unbelievable:

I think these videos pretty much speak for themselves.

If you'd like to get into Dream Theater i'd be happy to help guide you into it.

Over the past 10 months Dream Theater has climbed up to be my favorite band. I honestly can't see coming across anything in my lifetime that I will put ahead of them.

BEDN Day 1- One Year Nerdfightersary!

2009-11-01T19:53:00.000-06:00

Today, one year ago, was the day I became a nerdfighter. I subscribed to Vlogbrothers just over a year ago. Today is the day I bought Looking for Alaska one year ago. Little did I know that John and Hank would be visiting my city in 2 days (november 3rd, 2008). I did not find out until 3 days AFTER it happened. I had JUST subscribed to Vlogbrothers and I didnt yet know what was going on. I didn't know they were on a tour. This is a huge regret now.

Becoming a Nerdfighter I took on many new things. I was a fairly nerdy person in grade school. It sucked so I tried to change myself in high school. I kinda of took on a different persona for a while. After becoming a nerdfighter i sort of gave in to repressed nerdiness from grade school. It has changed the way I think. I now value things like intelligence much more.

A HUGE change is the amount that i have been reading. I've read more books in the past year than I did in the previous 10 years of my life combined since I have become a nerdfighter. I used to read about a book every two months or so and have now reached up to a maximum of one book per week.

I have gained so much from becoming a nerdfighter. The whole youtube community to start with has inspired me to do lots of great things. All the different youtubers that are involved with nerdfighters feel like a sort of home on the internet. Throw in the way to socially network with these people (twitter, facebook, skype) and you're in for a completely different way of interacting with people.

And the QUALITY of these people is astonishing. Lots of nerdfighters seem to find that they become better friends with other nerdfighters online than people they know in real life. I can easily agree to this. Theres just some level of intelectualism and love for "nerdy things" like reading and certain movies and stuff.

The stuff that comes to be as a result of nerdfighters blow my mind all the time. One mentionable thing is DFTBA records and it's sort of second sub-community within nerdfighters.

Every aspect of nerdfighters flows together to create something that has completely changed the person I am. Its very hard to explain though. It has given me so much. I cant even believe the things that have ended up in my life as a result of making the decision to becoming a nerdfighter. Ive met so many amazing people, ive branched out and tried new things, ive taken on many new loves of things I havnt seen, watched, heard, or done before.

The whole nerdfighter thing by itself isn't even what amazes me the most, its the huge amount of other things that changed in my life. Nerdfighters kind of rippled and affected many different parts of me. Such as twitter. Theres no way I would have twitter if I wasnt a nerdfighter. And if you use twitter, you know the kind of amazing endless crazy kind of world it can be. Other things like dailybooth and even this blog that kind of let me broadcast myself to other people via various forms of creative outlets. I could just about write a blog in itself for each subject of my life that nerdfighters has influenced or brought to life.

Such as the people i know because of skype. It is impossbile to explain how amazing friends through skype has become. They're like people that you can relate to more than anyone else you could ever know in regular life because they're all here in this community BECAUSE we are so compatible with each other through our nerdy interests.

Nerdfighters is like steroids for your mind on some levels.

If you would like a bit more of a synopsis of certain events that have come to pass as a result of me becoming a nerdfighter, i'd like to direct your attention to another blog post where I recently

discussed the difference in my life starting with having slow internet, going through becoming a youtuber and ending with where I am with youtube and all the people I know through the internet: http://paulsaysthings.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-i-came-to-be-where-i-am-now-on.html

If I've Been MIA From The Internet For A While....

2009-10-20T14:26:00.000-05:00

It's because i'm burnt out of it for now. Ive been focusing A LOT of my attention to the internet for the pats couple of weeks. I got burnt out of it. I do this all the time. I focus so much into one thing and then I throw it aside.

Plus, im becoming sick and all I want to do is sit around and watch The Office. Staring at the screen gives me a headache when im all nasal-y.

It's been one of my goals to stay away from the internet for a full week. I have just now decided as I'm writing this that it's time to do it.

I'm going to post my wednesday video for 7awesomebookworms tomorrow and then: no skype, no twitter, no facebook, no youtube, no dailybooth, no blogger, no internet until the next wednesday.

I feel like I should do this now because im going to be doing Blog Every Day in November so I obviously cant do this next month. The timing just feels right.

Those of you that have my number, feel free to call/text me during that week. Im sure I will be glad to hear from you.

Basically We're Cool....

2009-10-14T16:37:00.000-05:00

[4:34:57 PM] Arka says: :\

[4:35:06 PM] Esther says: :/

[4:35:13 PM] Valerie says: :\

[4:35:15 PM] Esther says: :/

[4:35:20 PM] Paul(SaysThings) says: :\

[4:35:24 PM] Valerie says: :/

[4:35:28 PM] Esther says: :\

[4:35:36 PM] Paul(SaysThings) says: :/

[4:35:39 PM] Valerie says: :\

[4:35:41 PM] Esther says: :/

[4:35:50 PM] Paul(SaysThings) says: :\

[4:35:55 PM] Valerie says: :/

[4:35:59 PM] Esther says: :\

[4:36:06 PM] Paul(SaysThings) says: :/

[4:36:10 PM] Valerie says: :\

[4:36:14 PM] Esther says: :/

[4:36:17 PM] Paul(SaysThings) says: :\

[4:36:20 PM] Valerie says: :/

[4:36:23 PM] Esther says: :\

[4:36:28 PM] Arielle Lindsey Roberts says: wtf guys!

[4:36:30 PM] Valerie says: NO

[4:36:33 PM] Paul(SaysThings) says: CCCOMBO BREAKER

hahahaha. you guys are awesome <3

How I Came To Be Where I Am Now (on the internet)

2009-10-10T19:29:00.000-05:00

It's coming up on my one year anniversary of becoming a nerdfighter. It's been an UH-MAZING year. I've met so many awesome people and done so many awesome things. It's only been a year but it feels like much longer. I cant even think about what it would be like had certain events not transpired. Im going to list how I came to be where I currently am. Please note that all these steps seemed arbitrary at the time, however exciting each step may have been. I would have never guessed that these events would domino effect to change my life so much.

1. The day I got hi-speed internet- I used to have AOL. We had it for SO LONG. After a long time of complaining about it we FINALLY got DSL. I think it was some time late in the year 2007. During that year there were all these amazing things going on that I would eventually get involved with. But I had no idea these things even existed yet.

After I got fast internet I could FINALLY watch youtube videos. I'd been on youtube before but very little because AOL doesnt load the videos for crap. It takes FOREVER to load a video. So I was finally able to watch videos. That first few weeks that I could watch videos was so amazing. Of course I was new so I didnt know anything of the amazing powers of youtube. All I did was watch animals and fat people doing funny stuff. Eventually I started to find videos that I couldnt watch because there was an age limit on them. My brother had started an account in order to verify his age to get past this. He actually had an account on youtube before I did if you can believe it (he doesnt really do much but barely watch videos. He's uploaded a few videos of him screwing around with his friends).

2. I signed up for a youtube account January 23rd, 2008. A seemingly arbitrary thing, but looking back it's incredible how important that move was.

A month after having a youtube account I posted my first few videos. They were recordings from a Ludo acoustic show I went to. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8ukvRYDW-c )

3. On March 22nd, 2008 I posted my "first" video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IIUSrEn2wE ) . It was a bass cover. I put up a few more bass covers until.....

(I forgot to mention somewhere in here was when I got my laptop. This was a key event but im already at step 8 so I dont feel like changing the story. If i didnt have my own computer then all of the events may not have happened because i had free reign of the internet whenever i felt like it)

4. I posted my first video that had me talking in it on March 22nd, 2008. It was done in one take. I talked about some DVDs. It was REALLY HORRIBLE ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnawMGqLn90 ) The best part is that I messed up what I was saying in the second sentence to come out of my mouth. I was so awkward talking on camera.

5. I finally figured out how to use the editing software my computer came with (Windows Movie Maker). The video files had to be converted before I could put them into the editor. Once I figured that out I was in business. I started looking around youtube for people to gain influence from. One of these was HayleyGHoover. This channel that I randomly stumbled upon began the changing of my life.

I did not know of the fiveawesomegirls the time I found Hayley. I don't remember how I eventually found her on the fiveawesomegirls. It was probably in the related videos or something. Hayley talked about this thing called "nerdfighters". I just kind of ignored her when she talked about it because it confused me. Eventually she posted footage on the fiveawesomegirls channel of a nerdfighter gathering. At that moment I thought nerdfighters was a Live Action Role Playing (LARP) game. The title "nerdfighters" made me think of a bunch of nerds standing in a field screaming "TWO MAGIC! 5 DAMAGE!" to each other.

6. The vlogbrothers were linked in the sidebar of a fiveawesomegirls video. I checked it out. I was still very confused for a while. I didnt consider myself a nerdfighter yet. I figured that I didnt have the credentials to be one or to be recognized by others as one. I decided that I must read these books that John Green wrote as a way of starting my initiation. I started with Looking For Alaska which I bought some time near the end of October. I consider the end of October when I officially became a nerdfighter.

From then on I considered myself one. I realized that I was a nerd at heart. I had been one in grade school but had repressed it severely in high school because of the bad reaction I got to it in grade school. Becoming a nerdfighter made me go back to my roots and to sort of liberate part of myself that I was repressing for the past few years.

During this whole time I was making videos and making acquaintances. Youtube had already given me lots of things. In many ways it simply served as a media outlet. A place I could check out music videos for new bands to listen to, see movie trailers, etc. There are no huge specific examples of my life being changed, but this period of time is still very important.

7. On February 2nd, 2008 I started my second youtube account- PaulSaysThings. I decided that my old account (bassownz) didnt have any focus. I was making dozens of different types of videos and it didnt look like i knew what I wanted to do with my channel. The other big reason for switching was that I finally got an HD camera and was getting confident enough in my abilities to entertain people and make quality content. I knew that I had lots of copyrighted material on my bassownz channel and that that was going to hold me back from potentially gaining my goal of becoming a youtube partner. So I decided to scrap everything that I had done and start completely fresh. It was very liberating and exciting.

8. Some time after making my channel, im not sure when but It was a few months in, I was subscribed by a user named Morgan (outofmyelement). This seemed like just another subscriber, but if I were to say that I would be terribly wrong.

(I think Morgan may have been the first nerdfighter to subscribe to me. Im probably wrong on that but it sounds about right.)

Morgan was the first to take the initiative in conversation. I can't remember what was said exactly but long story short we ended up following each other on twitter. (twitter could probably be another step but that's more of a side quest than something directly relevant to the main story line) Morgan told me about this thing called tweetdeck which was an application that ran twitter. I got tweetdeck and it caused me to tweet more because it was an open program and I didnt have to go onto the website every time to use twitter.

We replied back and forth until somewhere along the line I got skype and talked to Morgan on skype.

9. Step 9 actually involves another person. Katy (karatetentacles). I met Katy one night on skype because she was in a call with Morgan and then I was added to the call.

After becoming very confident in my video making abilities I began to start to want to become part of a collaboration channel on youtube. I asked Katy if she would want to start one and she said that she was already in one and they happened to need a new Wednesday. Eventually I joined the 7awesomebookworms channel. Here I met the other people that were the other days of the week on the channel.

10. Im not even sure how this step came to be. One night on skype Katy randomly added me to this giant skype chat. I recognized lots of the usernames in the chat from blogtv but had never actually talked to any of them.

Pretty much the rest kinda fills in itself. There are other stops along the way such as 2008's Project For Awesome where I strengthened my ties as a nerdfighter and discovered some amazing youtubers such as Doctor Noise. Another thing worth mentioning is the blogtv shows along the way. I meet cool people there all the time.

So here I am now. Youtuber, twitter-er, blogger, dailyboother, skyper, and nerdfighter.

These things came to be because of this chain of events.

I am so much nerdier now that I have ever been and it's pretty great (*makes raocow reference*)

I also read a LOT more, which is also pretty great.

So many other things worth mentioning. They all wont come to mind at the moment though. Things like The Mountain Goats and Raocow and all the amazing inside jokes and awesome times ive had with everyone through my computer.

To the people I have met (mostly via skype): Morgan, Katy, Cory, Darci, Kaitlin, Eevee, Rachel, Valerie, Abby, Esther, Arka, Julian, Blaze, Sara, and everyone else im forgetting because im sure theres a LOT im forgetting. You guys are amazing. Im lots of ways I definitely think that you are all cooler than I am. You guys have been PROUD nerds for a long time and I have only just recently reinstated that title upon myself. I love you guys VERY VERY MUCH <3

Best year of my life? We'll see...

If I did NaNo, the terribleness would kill people.

2009-10-08T17:41:00.000-05:00

I'm talking on skype with a bunch of people. Some of them are mentioning NaNoWriMo. This is something that i've just recently heard of. Its where you write an entire novel within the month of November. All the "cool kids" seem to be doing it. But not me.

I am a horrible writer. Even as I write this I only have a vague grasp of what the next sentence is going to be. I don't really know what it's going to be until it comes out. Like this. Or this. Typing. Typing. Typing (jee, typing is so fun when you do it really fast) Anyways....

If I WERE to participate in NaNoaweroaiwefomweit;am;df, the end result would be a disaster. I have creative blocks. Not just with writing but with just about everything. And sadly writing is where lots of creative outlets are started.

Maybe I just need to do it more often. Isn't that why i'm here in the first place writing this right now? Actually, in this case, it's not. I decided to write this blog because of our skype conversation about NaNo.

Getting back on track. If I were to to participate, my "novel" would probably end up as all my school papers. I don't have any experience with long intensive writings other than school essays. Sure i've written short stories, but that wasn't since like the third grade. (that was also quite a disaster). When I write (anything) I tend to make it up as its happening on the page. Its kind of exciting in a way. The way the words just kinda stream through my head and make sentences that hopefully work with one another to form something. But as far as planning goes there's usually next to nothing buzzing around in my head. I have an inkling as to what I want/need to talk about and where I want/need to go with it. Usually i'll have a few specific points of interest along the way. Things that I know I must touch upon. But even that stuff is mostly being formed as its coming onto the paper/computer.

Here I am writing a whole blog about not being able to write. Maybe i'm better at it then I think I am. Maybe my writing "style" does work and I just need to know how to write something and then revise, edit, and rewrite it. Maybe I should keep up writing like this to gain my confidence and try NaNo next year (?). I guess I could, actually. Just not this year because I've only just found out that it exists a few months ago.

The whole reason I'm writing this blog in the first place is because of the skype call. (here's another problem I have: I babble too much and seem to mention the same things over and over. I talk like that sometimes too). I decided that I would come up with the basis of a story on the spot to show everyone what it would be like if I did NaNo. I write an incredibly short and unfinished plot off the top of my head. I didnt put much thought into it. I just tried to get through with the story portion then focusing on all the details that could make even a bad story bearable.

Anyway. This is the disaster that came out of my fingers within about 3 minutes:

So theres this guy, and he's walking down the street. he keeps walking until he finds this sandwich lying on the ground. he picks it up. it looks seemingly delicious. he decides to take a bite. he puts the sandwich up to his mouth. stops. hesitates. he begins to wonder what might happen if he eats the sandwich. he puts the sandwich back on the ground and walks away. the sandwich begins to glow. "eat me" it says. so he picks up the sandwich and takes a bite.

chapter 2: sitting in the hospital bed our as of yet unnamed protagonist is conversing with the doctor. he is told that he has aids....

I said I was going to blog about my thursday so...

2009-09-04T11:11:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was pretty intesely amazing. It was the end of my second week of school. The second week is what I always call the first "real" week of school because the first week is always just getting settled in.

Anyway, I have my human sexuality class at 8. Its only an hour and 15 minutes so It really easy to pay attention to a lecture when it's that short. After that I had my first bowling class (first meaning this time we actually met at the bowling alley and bowled). ZOMG! THIS CLASS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME! 10 minute warm up (where we just bowl unscrored for a few frames) then two games. Not to mention we only have 5 people on a lane so you dont have to sit around and wait for your turn for too long.

I havnt been bowling for quite a few months now and somehow managed a 137 on my first game. After that I had an hour and a half "lunch" break before my next class. Well, there's a Jack in the Box right next to the bowling alley.... VICTORY! I think im going to go there every thursday and try as many different things on the menu as I can. By the end of the semester you can call me an expert at Jack in the Box. Eating didnt take long so I drove back to school and sat outside my next class for an hour and read. Then in my history class (which is also only an hour and 15 minutes) all we did was watch a movie (that was actually pretty interesting).

I came home and my friend called me to come over and play music. So I did and we FINALLY got some more music written. We wrote to more sections built onto the end of two of the songs we have. Then I came home, ate some awesome bbq chicken (which reminds me its still in the fridge and I get that for lunch TODAY), then went back to my friend's house to watch Cloverfield. It was amazing but way too short.

Thursday might end up becoming my favorite day of the week because of my awesome scheduling.

Now im off to read the last 120 something pages of The Half Blood Prince, maybe watch Star Wars the Clone Wars, and HOPEFULLY record some stuff for a video.

Media Review- June 2009

2009-06-27T15:14:00.000-05:00

At the end of every month I post a video on YouTube talking about all the movies, cds and books I bought within the month. I thought it would be a good idea to start posting a blog along with the video to give a more in depth review since I try not to talk to much on each product to keep the video time down.

So lets talk about the CDs I got in June 2009:

The Moaning Myrtles- Toilet Humor

The Moaning Myrtles are a wizard rock band featuring Lauren Fairweather from the fiveawesomegirls on YouTube. Toilet Humor is their second album. I was a bit reluctant in getting into the whole wizard rock thing but after a while Ive really started to enjoy it. This is a great album that has lots of funny/quirky/nerdy stuff about it. Give the songs a listen and you'll be singing along in no time. The Moaning Myrtles are great live if you get a chance to see them.

Overall- 3.5/5

Myspace

>Buy the CD<

Lauren Fairweather- Devil's Snare

This is Lauren Fairweather's (fiveawesomegirls, The Moaning Myrtles) first solo album. Its wrock/muggle rock. There are alot of great songs on the album such as "Going to Hogwarts" and "Nerdfighterlike" (a song which appeared on Hank Green's "So Jokes" album). I prefer this album to Lauren's second album. If you already like wizard/nerd rock or just like some independent music, give this album a listen.

Overall- 3.5/5

>Buy The CD<

Justin Finch-Fletchley and the Half-Blood Pizza

Im not sure which album this is from JFF (he has a lot of them). This is another wizard rock album. The songs on the album are alot more liveley than their live, acounstic counterparts. There are some awesome guitar solo/riffs over dubbed on most songs that make this album stand out from other wrock out there. A few songs are instant classics such as "Potions, Dancing, Hexing and Romancing". Other songs include "Miss Bulstrode"; a song about JFF infatuation with a Slytherin girl, and "Hairy Heart"; a song based off one of the "Tales of Beedle the Bard".

Overall- 3.5/5

Myspace

DFTBA Recods Compilation-Vol. 1

An album I was VERY excited to recieve in the mail. A compilation of amazing, independently made, not to mention very GOOD, music. The album features tons of musical YouTubers such as Hank Green, Julia Nunes, Dr. Noise, Dave Days and the Doctor Who themed band Chameleon Circuit (featuring Alex Day [nerimon] and Charlie McDonnell [charlieissocoollike] from the fiveawesomeguys). If your new to this kind of music scene, this is definitely an album you want to pick up to get aquainted with the awesome your missing out on. Most of the songs are REALLY catchy and alot of them also have some witty lyrics. This album has got me to put lots of new artists' albums on my wishlist.

Overall- 4.5/5

DFTBA.com

>Buy The CD<

Rancid-Let The Dominoes Fall

Ahhh... Rancid. One of the most quintessential punk rock bands of all time. Like all the albums before it, their new album has its own unique feel to it. Its influences remind me of Bluesy music and 50's style Rock 'n Roll. The whole album has this overall kick back, feel good, looking back at old times feel to it. The incredibly catchy songs will get stuck in your head very quickly. The single "Last One To Die" gets kinda drowned out by all the other songs that are better than it. The opening song "Easy Bay Night" is fantastic. My favorite on the album by far is "New Orleans". I got to see Rancid a few weeks ago with Rise Against. Their performance was nothing short of legendary. Old school Rancid fans will find lots to love on this album (although keep in mind this is probably their most mellow album). People that are new to Rancid will be able to get into this very easily because, while staying true to the Rancid sound, the album has a kind of mainstream sound to it (trying not to sound like its a bad thing) that new listeners will be able to enjoy.

Overall-4.5/5

>Buy The CD<

4 DeathCore CDS I picked up for $1.75 each

I dont have much to say on these individually so ill throw them into their own category. As the title says I got these 4 cds for $1.75 each. They are:

Job For A Cowboy- Doom. Excellent excellent excellent. I love it WAY more than their first album (Doom is an ep that came before the first album). I wish there could be more songs but hey, its an EP.

Overall- 5/5

>Buy The CD<

Born of Osiris- The New Reign. Another fantastic EP. This band has their first album coming out the begining of July. Be sure to check out this band, theres really something that's different about them. One of the noticeable differences is that its a deathcore band that uses synthsisers. Nice.

Overall-5/5

Myspace

>Buy The CD<

All Shall Perish- The Price of Existence. I really like it. Its a great album with some really heavy metal that ive been looking for. Nothing incredibly stand out about it but its still really great. If your into music this heavy, check out this band.

Overall-4/5

Myspace

>Buy The CD<

Despised Icon- The Ills of Modern Man. This band is supposed to be for fans of Suicide Silence (and boy do i LOVE me somg Suicide Silence). They're even on the same record label. I dont like the album much though. It makes me think of a heavier version of Hatebreed. It sounds like metal that was made by jocks. But that's just my opinion. I personally dont see anything special about it.

Overall-2.5/5

Myspace

>BuyThe CD<

Dream Theater- Black Clouds & Silver Linings

Of course I was VERY excited for the release of a new album from the most talented band ever. However, something about this album just isnt agreeing with me. I LOVE Dream Theater but the album seems to come short of what they're capable of. The first song "A Nightmare to Remember" is probably the most epic song i've ever heard (and is becoming my favorite Dream Theater songs). "A Rite of Passage" is kind of annoying to me. There's a song called "The Shattered Fortress" that uses different parts from past songs. That's really cool. But overall, I just wanted more from this album. Its mostly mellow. I'd compare it to Octavarium. I got the 3 disc special edition and i will say the 6 cover songs on the second disk are impressive. I havnt been able to listen to the third disk yet (all 6 album songs but with no vocals) but im probably going to like that alot more than the album itself.

Overall- 3/5

Myspace

>Buy The CD<

Suicide Silence- No Time To Bleed

FINALLY! The CD i'm most excited about this month. Suicide Silence's second album. Its nothing short of incredible. It didnt completely blow me away like the first album did (but that might be because im used to how amazing the music is now) but the album is still amazing. The songs have more diversity than the first album and the overall sound is a bit more polished and professional. Could probably use a few extra tracks on the album but im not complaning that much about that. To make a comparison the first album sounds like listening to razor blades, this one sounds like listening to a stampede of buffalos. PICK THIS ONE UP!

Overall- 5/5

Myspace

>But The CD<

The Essential Judas Priest

Not much to say on this one. If you like Judas Priest and dont have many of their albums you should get it. Its a good collection of their songs throughout all their albums.

And there you have it. Half wizard/nerd rock, a Rancid CD and the other half DeathCore. The absolute weirdest mix of CDs ive ever bought. My musical horizons were expanded in BOTH directions this month.

I are a blogger?

2009-06-26T22:44:00.001-05:00

This website is very confusing. Trying to set this all up.