Never been one to let the carrier drop

Not a single one of you wants to download the music of Mischief Committee? You must already have bought the album…

Okay, just kidding…

So, Bush said we were ‘addicted to oil’.

Yeah, but we’re also addicted to water. Another precious fluid that comes from underneith the earth, although it doesn’t have nearly as much energy in it. Um, unless you’re really into conspiricy theories.

Granted, it’s easier to make water than oil, but they’re both precious commodities, and the guys over in the desert might feel like they deserve more water.

Of course, the ironic thing is that Bush’s hydrogen economy, when coupled with GPSes, solar cells, and excessive creativity, might just make it rain in the desert.

*shrug* Just waiting for this sleeping pill I just took to take hold. The latest beastie we’re trying me on is Trazadone. How many drugs do you suppose I’ll try before I find one that can actually put me to sleep reliably. Well, there’s always NyQuil when all else fails. But that can not possibly be good for me.. I get about eight doses out of a bottle right now, which isn’t that far from the suggested dose, but, dude, NyQuil is not supposed to be a sleeping medication.

One of the things which is the suck is that half the time, I disagree with things I say 15 minutes after saying them. To say that this makes winning arguments difficult is a understatement.

So, basically, that whole I *AM* a religion thing? Probably not true, although I came up with a interesting set of justifications for it anyway:

A religion is a collection of core beliefs and stories, usually which illustrate those beliefs, which various people believe in.

My life is a collection of core beliefs and stories, usually which illustrate those beliefs, which various people believe in.

I will accept that my logic is faulty and that that was a *GROSS* oversimplication of what a religion is.

If there’s a uniform, we don’t wear it.
If there’s a law we don’t agree with, we break it.
If there’s a person hurting we can help, we help them.
If there’s something entertaining to do, we do it.
If there’s a limit, something that is completely impossible, we do it.
I will never believe that a loving God would torture any Soul willingly. (Unless the Soul wanted it.)

I may never find a religion to call my own. That’s okay, because I *AM* a religion.
I may never find a nation that can contain me, or a government that I can always agree with.
I swear I have no nation, but I am proud to own my heart.[1]

And, to quote from one of my previous entries, because I think it requires emphasis:

I want to think that all entities, no matter how complex or simple, no matter how rich or poor in energy, matter, or information, are in some sense equal and all are worthy of love and respect and, whenever possible, help in finding what they seek

These concepts are so old that they are immortal, and resonate within the very core of the universe:

It is better to build up than to tear down
Better to bring peace than war
Better to love than to hate
Better to include than to exclude
Better to create than to destroy

May God bless the humans as *e blesses all living entities. Oh, and I have this laundry list of things, features that would be really nice to add or remove. But then, doesn’t everyone. 😉 I am pretty impressed with the stock model of the universe, though. Pretty amazing work, really. *Shrug* Not that said diety needs my opinion. But, you know, everyone has to go on record at least once. Probably at various other points in my life I will think really dark things in the direction of the Power That Be – like, say, when my organs are failing and I’m in incredible pain. For that matter I don’t really like the whole Death thing that much – Kind of a Log In/Log Out/Multiple Universe/Really Good Interface For Travel system would be more to my liking.

I will always believe in my soul that I am a hacker, and that this is a Good Thing. Even though there’s probably a billion people who can write code better than me (if you look, for example, over the life span of the universe). (Actually, that’s probably a very low estimate. Let’s say there’s a infinate set who can write code better than me, and a infinate set who can write music better than me.)

[1] – Marillion, White Feather

*shrug*. I sleep now. Sorry about all the lofty idealism, everybody.

On May 2 of 2004, I joined/created/was part of the creation of a band called Mischief Committee. We’re working on a few last tracks before we all go our seperate ways, and we’ve had many people jam with us and (somewhat memorably) had a member leave for San Francisco already. But, at one point, we wrote a CD and had a CD release party with all of our friends and some of their friends and as far as I know some of the homeless population of Seattle there..

And somehow I never got around to ripping the CD and putting it up on the internet.

So now I have. Enjoy this particular bit of the number line, if you’re inclined, it’s at

http://www.mischiefcommittee.org/mc_album1/

Yes, it’s there in it’s entirety. I can’t claim to own this bit of the number line exactly, but then, I never really own anything. Everything I have I’m just using while I’m alive and hopefully when I’m dead someone else will come along and use it. I think of it as on loan from the Family. Those of you who know about the Family of dancing friends, or the Rainbow family, or any bloody Family you want to attribute it to, please make sure it all gets put to good use, when and if. I’m hoping I’m not going to die anytime soon – or that if I do, I go somewhere really interesting with lots of sex and friendly people and as little violence as possible. But I digress..

Anyway, so, I don’t own these tracks, but I am renting them on planet Earth for the time being. Well, me and Alex and Tory. It had a lot of fun moments, guys, and I’m sure glad we did it.

(p.s. Someday I’m going to set up all those lights and lasers and speakers and whatnot and have a free 80’s-themed party. It should be interesting seeing who we can get to show up.)

Once, a while ago, I made a comment on a mailing list about PLUR (which I think of as being the credo of the electronic dance community, although I know there are many who would tell me I’m wrong). I observed that the opposite of PLUR must be WHDD – War, Hate, Diversity, Destruction.

Just one problem – I *like* diversity. But yet unity sounds appealing as well. Which just goes to show the folly of having any credo at all, I suppose. I can’t even come up with unity within myself half the time – I’ve noticed that when I talk to myself, I tend to be more than one person.

Recently, I hit upon a interesting thought. What if I’m a cell inside my own body? Normally we think of the brain as being a whole bunch of cells built into a neural network, and I’m personally very foggy about what happens afterwords to give us free will, but it must be really interesting. If you’re ever bored, try to make a computer generate *truly* random numbers. It’ll keep you busy for a while. The cryptographers can probably write several very long books on the subject.

But really – how can I prove my experience on Earth isn’t, in fact, a experience of being within my own body, and all the other people I interact with – who produce such tasty food – aren’t in fact cells in my body.. and of course, I’m not better or more important than any of these other cells. I mean, we all are part of one unity..

At the very least, I am a team – all of my cells form one entity, which is me. Some of them might in fact be parts of other entities at the same time – as I’ve often demonstrated, I really have no idea what’s actually going on – but, they definately do form this person who walks around on Earth and does things – some of which appear to me to be improbable to come up with just by playing with a random number generator.

More in a friends-only post.

Me and K. were having a discussion the other day about life – as in, what ‘life’ is – I was commenting that there might very well be intelligent life on other planets, and that it was possible that not all life lived at the same clock speed i.e. a breath for a being made out of, say, uranium might take several thousand years.

Actually, I was theorizing tempurature had a lot to do with the speed of a life cycle.

Anyway, I checked the wikipedia, source of most knowledge, and it said this. So I’ve concluded that none of this rules out, for example, silicon based life that takes several hundred years to move.

Which goes to prove nothing. I’d like to think it demonstrates my out of the box thinking, but the truth of the matter is I suspect everyone thinks about things like this and I’m the only one who’s enough of a wanker to write journal entries about them.

I was looking at my webstats the other day.. and one particular track I wrote, Love & Hate, got over a hundred downloads. In one month.

Wow.

I may have to write some more songs.

I’m almost afraid as to what reception my mother’s birthday present is going to generate.

I really need to redo Mischief Committee’s web site and put up the tracks from the album.

Put it on the list of five million things that I really need to do.

Seems like nothing gets done around here any more..

For those of you keeping track, yes, I’m still alive. Although sometimes it seems like just barely.

Okay, so I agreed to come and be wooed by a potential employer in SoCal, and they put me up at the Radisson in Newport Beach, for a price that I won’t quote because it’s too horrific. This hotel seems to be very good at looking ostentatious, but has some serious problems with the details of being a good hotel.

My first complaint: All hotels which cost more than $120 a night shalt have fluffy towels. Their towels remind me of motel 6 towels – entirely too thin and small to dry off a entire person with.

My second complaint: despite the fact that I was clearly assigned a king size bed, they originally tried to pawn off two very small queens on me.

My third complaint: The laundry vending machines that sell dryer sheets and whatnot are mislabeled, making actually buying the correct laundry product difficult. The staff are very hesitent to refund money and mostly claim that this inadequacy is ‘somebody else’s problem’.

My fourth complaint: (and I admit, this may be petty) Room service closes at 10:30. Calling at 10:28 by the cell network, which I think gets time from the atomic clock, will result in them telling you they are closed.

My fifth complaint: There are no snack machines.

My sixth complaint: There is one microwave in the entire hotel.

My seventh complaint: None of the hotel entrances have access card readers, and they’re all locked at night, allowing access only through the front entrance.

My eighth complaint: Only a very few rooms have refrigerators, and no minibars either. 😉

My ninth complaint: The TVs are really small.

My tenth complaint: The hotel keys have ‘sleep number bed’ proudly emblazoned on them, but neither of the rooms we were in actually had sleep number beds.

My eleventh complaint: The wifi must be renewed every day, and for all I know they’re tracking my MAC address – certainly they ask for my name every day. They threaten to charge in the lobby, with placards such as ‘applicable charges may apply’

My twelfth complaint: The tubs are tiny – they’re not deep enough to immerse my head in, and they’re not long enough to stretch out in, and in general they’re just too small in all ways.

Aren’t you glad you have me on your friends list? Didn’t you really need to know all this?

Okay, sorry..
S.

In another hour, I’ll be 30. Actually, as Kayti points out, where I was born, I’m already 30. I’m not sure how I feel about this – I keep waiting to suddenly turn republican, but so far it hasn’t happened. I’m not sure what I have turned instead..

Depressed.