Music
Music means so little to me now. It's bizarre. I used to base most of my life on the music I listened to. I cataloged time, dates, seasons, emotions, and people by songs and albums.
Now, I barely listen to music. I bought a CD a week or so ago (The Best of Electric Light Orchestra) to try to rekindle my musical juices. I still haven't finished it. The last three albums to have done anything for me have been VNV Nation - Of Faith, Power, and Glory; Derek Webb - Stockholm Syndrome; and The Real Tuesday Weld - London Book of the Dead, but all of those were early last semester. I'm not even doing my radio show, Doom and Cookies, this semester.
Is it a maturity thing? Was music just my way of dealing with things I didn't understand, and now I've replaced it with something else? I guess a fair bit of why I enjoyed music was because it helped me through loneliness, boredom, and depression, none of which I really face frequently anymore.
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Another thing I wanted to talk about: I don't believe in Alaska anymore.
I came to this realization one day after Biotechnology Regulation, when I was listening to my professor give her views on politics. She's pretty moderate and intelligent, so it was an interesting discussion.
Out of nowhere, she took a hard turn left and started talking about how the problem with America is we spend too much on military power, should stop drilling for oil,and invest in renewable energy.
I started parroting my conservative stance about how we should build more oil refineries and drill for oil in Alaska, and she got very upset and told me I should ask the people in Alaska what happened to their permafrost, globalwarmingfloodingcataclysmpolarbearsraaaaawr.
In a slightly related story, Ariane and I saw "The Fourth Kind" a movie that claimed in its ads it was based on a true story [it's complete bullshit, as we shall see) about a psychiatrist investigating sleep disorders in Nome, Alaska. I thought it was mostly a well-done movie, but made a few major mistakes that led me to disbelieve its credibility.
The movie displays Nome, Alaska as sprawled throughout a valley between majestic mountain ranges covered in rich, pine forests. A resident of Nome, Alaska, indigent about the movie portraying Nome as a place where people constantly getting anally probed and mind-wiped by aliens, posted a picture of Nome. It's a huddled little cluster of buildings in a plain of snow.
Hearing my professor talk about the (supposed) widespread devastation of Alaska made me think, along with my gullibility about the nature of Nome, I realized: I don't know anything about Alaska. I've never been there, and from what I've researched about Alaska, it's a pretty big and varied place. Everything I've ever been told about Alaska, I've automatically believed because I had no experience about Alaska. For all I know, Alaska is inhabited solely by giant purple cows that subsist entirely on wind power produced by generators in their ears.
All the information I have ever been given on Alaska is conflicting. Maybe there is widespread flooding and global warming. Maybe it's caused by the heat of all that repeated anal probing. I don't know.
And until I really can find reliable information, I just won't believe in Alaska.
-LSmaug
Now, I barely listen to music. I bought a CD a week or so ago (The Best of Electric Light Orchestra) to try to rekindle my musical juices. I still haven't finished it. The last three albums to have done anything for me have been VNV Nation - Of Faith, Power, and Glory; Derek Webb - Stockholm Syndrome; and The Real Tuesday Weld - London Book of the Dead, but all of those were early last semester. I'm not even doing my radio show, Doom and Cookies, this semester.
Is it a maturity thing? Was music just my way of dealing with things I didn't understand, and now I've replaced it with something else? I guess a fair bit of why I enjoyed music was because it helped me through loneliness, boredom, and depression, none of which I really face frequently anymore.
- - - - - - - - - -
Another thing I wanted to talk about: I don't believe in Alaska anymore.
I came to this realization one day after Biotechnology Regulation, when I was listening to my professor give her views on politics. She's pretty moderate and intelligent, so it was an interesting discussion.
Out of nowhere, she took a hard turn left and started talking about how the problem with America is we spend too much on military power, should stop drilling for oil,and invest in renewable energy.
I started parroting my conservative stance about how we should build more oil refineries and drill for oil in Alaska, and she got very upset and told me I should ask the people in Alaska what happened to their permafrost, globalwarmingfloodingcataclysmpolarbearsraaaaawr.
In a slightly related story, Ariane and I saw "The Fourth Kind" a movie that claimed in its ads it was based on a true story [it's complete bullshit, as we shall see) about a psychiatrist investigating sleep disorders in Nome, Alaska. I thought it was mostly a well-done movie, but made a few major mistakes that led me to disbelieve its credibility.
The movie displays Nome, Alaska as sprawled throughout a valley between majestic mountain ranges covered in rich, pine forests. A resident of Nome, Alaska, indigent about the movie portraying Nome as a place where people constantly getting anally probed and mind-wiped by aliens, posted a picture of Nome. It's a huddled little cluster of buildings in a plain of snow.
Hearing my professor talk about the (supposed) widespread devastation of Alaska made me think, along with my gullibility about the nature of Nome, I realized: I don't know anything about Alaska. I've never been there, and from what I've researched about Alaska, it's a pretty big and varied place. Everything I've ever been told about Alaska, I've automatically believed because I had no experience about Alaska. For all I know, Alaska is inhabited solely by giant purple cows that subsist entirely on wind power produced by generators in their ears.
All the information I have ever been given on Alaska is conflicting. Maybe there is widespread flooding and global warming. Maybe it's caused by the heat of all that repeated anal probing. I don't know.
And until I really can find reliable information, I just won't believe in Alaska.
-LSmaug