hope that i get old before i die…

well, i thought this would be a good time to dust off the cobwebs of this place and get writing again. today’s subject has to do a little bit with quantum physics theory, so i will provide some background on that first for those who are too lazy to look it up, or who can’t understand the reference material. we start with the fact that at the quantum level, the pieces of matter we know and love like protons, electrons, neutrons, and all the rest do not have a well defined area of space and/or time that they exist in. in other words, they are impossible to measure without highly specialized and expensive equipment. werner heisenberg said that not only are they impossible to measure, but that you can’t know one set of parameters without totally messing up some other measurements in the process. for instance, you can possibly measure a particle’s position but you can’t really know its momentum once you measure its position accurately. in physics we call this collapsing the waveform, because most particles act similar to waves at that level, and the equations that describe them closely fit equations for waves. the reason the waveform is collapsed though, is because once you measure a piece of that information you forever change the way that particle/wave is observed and it will never go back to the state you found it in from before you measured it. understand? taking the measurement of quantum particles forever changes the nature of those particles.

so there’s this girl that i’ve known for about a year and a half. we’ve had some good times and some better sex but for the most part we had an understanding that we were mostly friends with benefits and that was the end of things. all that changed about six weeks ago when we took a small road trip together. we found ourselves enjoying each other to the point that i started thinking that we were finally taking that step from friends with benefits to potential girlfriend material. over the course of this year and a half we had our moments where she started to let me in but then would push me away. then she’d let me in again but then push me away. lather, rinse, repeat. this time around, she didn’t push me away when we started getting closer. so i operated under the assumption that we were actually making something work together and it would not be long before we became “official”.

…and that’s where the happiness ends. because last week an old friend from high school came to town. an old friend who happens to be a guy. an old friend she hasn’t seen in over four years. an old friend that she thought about trying to sleep with on several occasions long before i came on the scene. my more astute readers are already knowing where this is heading. yes, she spent a total of three days with this old friend and has decided that he means more to her than anything else in the world, and i should just understand because “we didn’t have a commitment to each other anyway”. needless to say, i’ve spent the last week in a range of emotions that nobody should have to endure in their lifetime. i think i’ve lost several pounds on the “crushing depression” diet. and she knew i had feelings for her but didn’t think i was going to be as good to her as this guy. who she hasn’t seen for four years. who, although they knew each other before, is almost certainly not the same person she knew in high school. and so everything i’ve been working towards this past year and a half is gone in one weekend.

what does this have to do with quantum physics? it is this: my relationship with this girl was measured. the waveform collapsed — big time. and it is now forever different for the future. the fact that she has been one of my best friends i’ve ever had just adds insult to the injury, we can never go back again. she’s set determined to be with this guy now and she’s convinced herself that he cares too. and i can’t talk too much about how fast they’re moving because i was in a long term relationship that moved almost as fast. but most of my time with this girl was actual time spent together, and that means that as long as he’s around i will not be able to be around her. and she wants him to move in with her soon. so in the space of three days, we’ve gone from hanging out almost every day to we may never see each other again. if ever there was a candidate for the phrase “collapsing waveform” outside the realms of physics, i think this definitely qualifies. nothing makes sense right now, and every day is a challenge to make it through till tomorrow. but i have a lot on my plate this week, so i’m hoping it will be enough to help me get over the fact that the potential current love of my life is now no more than the proverbial dust in the wind….

unfortunately, this is going to be an emo post. but i’ve come to a realization lately that what i think of as friends are nothing more than close acquaintances in the big picture of things. maybe it’s the digital age or maybe it’s LA itself, but i find that people who are true friends to me will actually call/text me back if i should call/text them first. the ones who don’t even answer and don’t even acknowledge that i sent them a message should be a hint that they don’t value me in their lives at all. i’d like to chalk it up to LA, because i know that the friends i had in austin would at least give me a yes/no answer to a yes/no question. none of this “i’ll answer you if i feel like it because i’m too busy to text a simple yes or no to your message”

anyway, i was hoping to meet some people out tonight for a night of great music but of course nobody can answer me i really don’t care if they can’t make it or don’t want to go out, but if i ask “hey, want to check out this show tonight?” and get *nothing* back? yeah, that really pisses me off. especially when it happens from people who i *have* spent some time with and who i thought i was close enough to that i can at least get a “hey maybe next time” or something similar. the upshot of the whole ordeal is that even when i ran into some girls i knew were going to be there tonight, i didn’t get much more than a couple sentences from them either, despite the fact that we’ve all hung out together and again, i thought we were closer than we apparently are. somehow i always end up as that person who gets interrupted mid-sentence, or find myself suddenly talking to nobody but me when i thought i was having a conversation with someone. maybe i should just take the hint and find someone who does want to talk to me. well, i ended up leaving early, which i *never* do on a normal night. i’m usually the one who is last to leave, or near the end at least. but something about tonight just put me in a foul mood.

thankfully humanity redeemed itself in the form of tommy’s burgers where i had an actual conversation with some people waiting in line. not only that but found that we even had a shared experience from a dodger’s game in the not-so-distant past. i had more fun waiting in line for a chili burger than i did listening to some awesome musicians, and for some reason, that just doesn’t seem right….

– they say noam chomsky is the most quoted intellectual of our time. for anyone who has never seen him speak, the reason he is the most quoted is because nobody can sit through a whole lecture without falling asleep at his monotone delivery. much better to have someone else quote you the good stuff later, trust me on this one.

— speaking of chomsky, i would LOVE to be in line to a speech by him, or someone of his ilk and stature, and have people hoping for classics, similar to the banter overheard at a big name music concert. “oh man, i hope he does the iran/contra speech again tonight” “yeah, i bet he encores with panama and the spread of US hegemony in latin america”

— arizona is reporting tainted melons. does that mean that they have melons with big balls?

— easter is supposed to be celebrating the day that jesus rose from the dead after being crucified. in other words, the church is celebrating the zombification of jesus? i guess that’s why there’s no record of any sermons after the resurrection. can you imagine a zombie jesus roaming the countryside, people come from miles around just to hear him say “braaaiiinnnss…..” of course, with the zealotry of today’s chrisitians, we’d have a veritable zombie army by now….

— i realize they call it faith because you’re supposed to just accept that it actually happened, but i still think that someone arranged to have jesus’ body removed from his tomb, hid the body, then told everyone he rose from the dead and made this whole “son of god” mystique around it. “no seriously, he rose from the dead! well of course there’s no body, he ascended to heaven because he’s the son of god!” “ooooh, that explains it alright”

Jesus was way cool
Everybody liked Jesus
Everybody wanted to hang out with him
Anything he wanted to do, he did
He turned water into wine
And if he wanted to
He could have turned wheat into marijuana
Or sugar into cocaine
Or vitamin pills into amphetamines

He walked on the water
And swam on the land
He would tell these stories
And people would listen
He was really cool

If you were blind or lame
You just went to Jesus
And he would put his hands on you
And you would be healed
That’s so cool

He could’ve played guitar better than Hendrix
He could’ve told the future
He could’ve baked the most delicious cake in the world
He could’ve scored more goals than Wayne Gretzky
He could’ve danced better than Barishnikov
Jesus could have been funnier than any comedian you can think of
Jesus was way cool

He told people to eat his body and drink his blood
That’s so cool
Jesus was so cool
But then some people got jealous of how cool he was
So they killed him
But then he rose from the dead
He rose from the dead, danced around
Then went up to heaven
I mean, that’s so cool
Jesus was way cool

No wonder there are so many Christians

i read on another blog a question about time travel. i decided that this would make a great post, since i haven’t written much lately. my take on time travel is like this:

let’s say we have a 3-d coordinate system, much like the one we exist in every day. time is considered the 4th dimension after length, width and height. but what happens is that time is not one more set of axes based at the “center” of this 3d coordinate system, it’s yet another set of axes which moves along the set created by the 3-d universe.

now, being that time is always flowing forward according to our perception, to me that means that our consciousness filters out the extraneous time caused by existing in a 3d system within a 3-d universe. the way we travel through the time dimension is very similar to the way a function is plotted on a graph. we make smooth transitions from one time frame to the next, but our traversal of time doesn’t necessarily follow a linear path, we just think it does because of our built-in filters.

this means that time travel *is* technically possible, if we can only figure out how to go back to a previous set of (x,y,z) coordinates in our life “function”. this is where it gets a little tricky, because we can’t guarantee that we will set down in the EXACT time coordinate that our perception originally recorded. to give an example that i just pulled out of my ass, we can travel back to (3,4,5) but if we perceived ourselves to have existed at (1,2,3) in time, and we suddenly find ourselves not back at (1,2,3) but (1,2,3.1) then we may find ourselves in a *similar* time frame, but not quite right. or we may find ourselves totally out of place from where we thought we would be, even though we came back to “the same time” that we left.

so yes, i think that time travellers from the future have been coming through for quite some time, but we may not even perceive their presence because our relative coordinates may not have lined up, even if we existed in the same (x,y,z) space as each other. because even if the majority of our time coordinates were the same, they would still be different enough that we may not even see each other. coincidentally, this also gives some basis for the concept of alternate realities, because each moment in time that we exist also exists as an infinite number of other moments, none of which are exactly alike. by making the choices that we make in our lives, it changes the direction we follow through the time dimension and also creates new branches in the future that we may or may not ever catch up to again.

typing this post has made me want to go to grad school just to study enough math to prove this. but unless someone out there is willing to fund my “research”, i don’t think this is going to happen….

i was listening to the radio on the way home from work today and they said the title of this post on the air. of course, they were referencing “attacks across iraq today” but it definitely got me to thinking about the peculiarity that is the english language. what other language exists that has so many words that sound alike but have completely different meanings? for that matter, what other language has so many words that are *spelled* the same but have different meanings? i haven’t studied all languages ever in the history of the world, but i have yet to find any which have these problems the same way english does. i’ve heard stories about japanese being similar in this regard but if someone who knows japanese can set me straight on this issue i’d love to know more. still, it’s a wonder that those of us who speak english can understand each other at all considering how these words stack up against each other.

and in other news, i found this story online while waiting for my work email to load. apparently there are a lot of registered sex offenders taking correspondence courses by applying for financial aid which is set aside for those needy students who can’t normally afford a college education. also apparently, there are a lot of lawmakers in this country who think that these ex-criminals don’t deserve to be using this money to actually pay for an education. now, i will completely agree that they should not be spending the leftover money on things that are not related to their education, but this is true for ALL students who receive pell grants and college financial aid.

when i used to get pell grants for college, i sure as hell didn’t spend the leftover on books and school supplies. unless by “books” you mean pizza, and by “school supplies” you mean beer. every college student does this, this is nothing new whatsoever. there are even students who sign up, get their financial aid check, and then drop classes for a full refund of the money. this is also nothing new whatsoever. where the outrage is coming from is the fact that these are sexual predators, registered as such with the various state agencies that deal with such crimes. and in our “tough on crime” society, we have politicians who would rather lock these people up and literally throw away the key than spend one single dime on educating them so that they can one day possibly be released into society again.

we already have laws which decide where these people can live, whether or not they can drive their own vehicle to and from work (assuming they can even *find* a job), how much time they can spend on the internet (if at all), and other limitations on their lives. but now that some of them want to get themselves an education using the law as it is already written, suddenly there is an outrage. yes it’s true that there are some registered sex offenders who have committed truly horrendous crimes against humanity. and some of them definitely deserve to be locked up for most of the rest of their lives. but the ones who are able to finish their sentences and get released back into society should not be held back if they want to better themselves.

as i have always said, it used to be a badge of honor to work yourself up from the bottom and make something of yourself. not only that, but supposedly with a little hard work you *can* make something of yourself in america. but more and more our society is closing its doors to all but the ones who can pay to play. if you don’t already have money, you are not as likely to have a chance to lift yourself up out of your situation. and god help you if you should be convicted of a sex crime, or a drug offense, because that means that you will never be allowed to go to school if you can’t afford to pay for it yourself. but if you were convicted of a sex crime or drug offense, good luck finding a place to hire you that will let you make enough money to afford to pay for college yourself, even a community college or correspondence course….

well, it’s roughly 7 hours until kickoff so i’m going to make a prediction about today’s game. there’s a lot to consider when you look at today’s game between the giants and patriots. on the one hand, the patriots have literally been unstoppable all year. on the other hand, the giants are 10-1 including the playoffs when they play on the road. and this year the giants are the road team, so hopefully that means they’ll be 11-1 on the road including the playoffs.

but in reality, every year it’s always the team with the most commercial break segments who comes out on top, and i don’t think this year will be any exception. until about 8 or 9 years ago, the nfl used to put equal time on the segments they would show both from the game and individual players’ comments about the chance to be in the superbowl. but i’ve had plenty of people insist that the superbowl is fixed, and i didn’t believe them at all until the game between the raiders and the buccanneers. that was when i first noticed this phenomenon.

in that game, there was something like 8 players from tampa bay talking about playing in the big game, and only jerry rice from the raiders as i recall. every year since then it’s followed the same pattern. so look out for which team is favored in the commercial segments to be the ultimate winner in this game. and if it happens again this year as it has over the past 8, i will finally believe that this game is more corrupt than a heavyweight boxing match.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7215226.stm

for years i have heard from too many u2 apologists who make excuses for the sub-par music that their favorite band has produced in the last 15 years. when “achtung baby” came out and the band switched from a political rock band to one more concerned with radio play and airtime, i heard a lot of people say that u2 was just focusing on their music instead of their politics, that the music should be more important. i took this one in stride, because i definitely respect a band which would take time to release music that they want to sound the best it can be. but half the tracks on this album sound like they were afterthoughts, and the album as a whole was most definitely beneath the quality of “the joshua tree”. but then, nothing u2 has done has ever equalled the excellence of that album, so it’s not a fair comparison in hindsight.

but my main interest in u2 was always the fact that they were so strong in their political convictions, and especially on topics that i was also interested in: the ongoing conflict between britain and ireland, illegal whaling, apartheid south africa, and a few others. this was a band that i admired in all aspects of their personal *and* public lives. not only did they release some of the best music i had heard in my life, but they took some bold (in my mind at least) stances on issues that were difficult to solve. but then i heard bono sing the high praises of then world bank president james wolfensohn, and what a great job the world bank does worldwide. this despite the fact that the world bank gets countries out of poverty by putting the country’s resources in the hands of foreign investors who only want to profit at the expense of a country with an excessive amount of poor people who are ripe for exploitation.

so when i hear larry mullen and the edge say, after the release of “achtung baby” that they didn’t feel attached to the music, they were just putting this album out to make money off of it, my image of the band as a group of guys standing up for their ideals began to crumble. the apologists would say, again, that the band was focusing on the music, and why shouldn’t they be allowed to make money with their music? the problem with this argument, as i have always felt, is that if the music is only there to make money then how are they any different from the “hit machines” of top 40 radio? you know, the ones who have a few hits, make their money and then cash out before people realize they have no more musical talent than your average vending machine?

after “achtung baby” u2 released one mediocre album after another and my respect for their music has dwindled to little more than reliving the glorious years leading up to the joshua tree. i think the icing on the cake for this phenomenon was when they released a video for the song “vertigo” as an ipod ad before it even hit the stores in order to sell as many copies of “the u2 ipod” as possible. this band has been coasting for years and have been more concerned with commercial success than in creating the kind of music that inspired millions of people throughout their first decade as recording artists.

so yesterday, when u2’s manager paul mcguiness came out in favor of forcing ISP’s to prevent people from downloading music not approved by the recording industry, i was forced to finally admit that u2 is nothing more than a bunch of money hungry millionaires who care not one whit for fans of music. the music industry succeeded for so many years because people were forced to pay inflated prices on media costs. that cd your favorite record store puts on the shelf and prices at $15? it costs the publishing company less than a dollar to pump one out. that other $14 you pay goes to lining the pockets of the recording industry, and if the artist has negotiated a good contract they may see $1 from each cd sale, if that. so for industry folks to try to pretend that the artists are suffering is really not happening at all. what’s going on is that industry executives see their six martini lunches threatened by a changing market and they want to prevent that market from innovating them out of existence.

the basis of an economy is the law of supply and demand. when the consumers demand something, the economy reacts by trying to increase supply. but when consumers demand a downloadable, digitally encoded file instead of a clunky, plastic ring to listen to their favorite music, the suppliers are fighting tooth and nail to keep that from happening. they want to force the world to keep paying $15 too much for that plastic ring because then their profits are continually assured year after year as long as they keep an absolute dictatorship over the supply source. if this were truly about artists not making any money on the music they create then the industry should renegotiate those contracts and give the artists a bigger slice of the music sales pie.

radiohead just proved that an established band doesn’t need a big name label to get people to buy their music. this is what the true issue is where internet-based music is concerned. the artists make the vast majority of the money off of concerts and merchandise, not in cd sales. i have friends who are literally “starving artist” musicians who don’t care if they give away their cd’s as long as people support them by coming to hear them play and telling their friends what great musicians they are (links to come for anyone who is still reading who wants to support some great musicians! ) the point is, that music can still be given away for free and the artists will not have to starve for it. the ones who are afraid of starving are the people who cling to an antiquated, dying industry in the hopes that they can continue to line their pockets on the backs of the musicians and artists who get pennies on the dollar for each album purchased in a store somewhere.

on that note, here are some GREAT musicians that you should support in any way you can because they are making some of the best music you’ve never heard before:

Ryan Hanifl — his latest CD “Sourpuss” is an amazing journey of sound and emotion.

Arrica Rose and the …’s — a local folk rock band featuring some of the most dedicated musicians i have ever met in my life. plus arrica and her guitarist abby kincaid are part of a group of female musicians calling themselves The Bombshell Alliance which is set up as a charity for some very good causes. these ladies are worth supporting just on that alone, but they still produce some incredible music too!

Curtis Peoples — Curtis likes to put an 80’s retro sound on some pop hooks and turn it into something that sounds familiar but yet still brings you in with its energy and passion.

Ernie Halter — Ernie has an amazing voice and a great flair for arrangement in his songs. plus you get to play the “Ernie Halter drinking game” that i invented. every time Ernie says “Love” in a song, take a shot. (ok ernie, it’s a joke, please don’t hurt me! )

Joey Ryan — Joey puts an amazing sound together between himself and his guitar that i have yet to hear from another artist. and it’s his birthday in a little over a week, so get some of his music just for that reason!

The Elevaters — I took a friend to see these guys play last week and she thought they were one of the best bands she’s seen in a long time. they play a funk/soul/hip hop fusion which turns into some of the most energetic music you will see onstage. these guys also have big hearts off the stage and will be playing some charity benefit concerts in the LA area this week. definitely another band to support just for their dedication to these issues alone.

Laura Jansen — I used to call Laura Jansen “the little girl with the big voice” when i would describe her to anyone who had never heard her before. she is definitely one artist that you should not miss if you have a chance to see her play because it’s hard to believe that she has such a powerful voice if you don’t experience it for yourself in person.

and last but not least Sara Hickman. I can’t say enough about this lady and what she does, both musically and life in general. Sara is one of those musicians whose heart is bigger than her fan base. she works with half price books and other charities to provide poor and sick children the opportunity to have access to books. i have written about sara before in these pages, so i won’t say too much more about her, except that she is one of my favorite people on this planet and i feel privileged to have met her on more than one occasion.

these artists, and others like them, are the ones who everyone should be supporting in any way they can. the best way would be to pay for a ticket to see their shows. but if you can’t do that, as long as you make other people aware of the kind of talent they possess and help them reach out to more and more interested fans then we can prevent people like paul mcguiness and the u2’s and metallica’s of the world telling us how we are allowed to spend our money on music. don’t forget that the music market is built on supply and demand. if you don’t demand it, they won’t supply it. and if they stop allowing music to be freely shared among fans, then music made by artists like the above may never be heard.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7214524.stm

the above article says that there is an asteroid poised to make a very close pass by earth, albeit at a distance just outside the range of the moon. at that distance there’s not really much that can be done except to just watch it go by. which is of course what astronomers all over the planet will be doing once it makes its approach.

on the other hand, there is a satellite ready to crash into the earth sometime next month. since it’s considered a spy satellite, there is a lot of talk about the best way to bring it down. my one concern is: if it falls on your property and causes a lot of damage, how does your insurance cover it? i mean, it’s not exactly an act of god since humans put it up there and humans were the ones who lost control of it. but i doubt your average insurance company is going to have satellite insurance just on the off chance that your home gets demolished by space debris. although lloyd’s of london will probably write something up for you if you can afford to pay the premiums…

just finished listening to this song (from the title) not too long ago. this particular piece always puts me in the mood of that time right after high school, when i was kicked out of college for my horrendous grades, spending my nights at my dad’s house outside for hours at a time just staring up at the sky, making up my dreams and goals in life. at the time, it meant getting high and watching the stars, trying to learn their secrets. of course, one of the side benefits of this practice is that i can still pretty accurately tell the time at night (in the summertime) just by the position of the stars in the sky.

i have to say that i am definitely not where i imagined myself to be at that time in my life. but this is the path life sets us on, and we either go with the flow or fight against it. but no matter how much fighting we do, we will still find ourselves where fate leads us. people argue all the time whether or not we have free will to make our own decisions, or if some other power is making them for us and we just have to accept that our lives are not in our control. personally, i believe that we make choices that put us on a path to our destiny, but the decisions we make in our lives determine whether or not we go gracefully or kicking and screaming.

especially i feel lately that i am again missing something in my life, and i am hard pressed to figure out what exactly is missing. maybe it’s the budding political season calling me back to activism, or it could be that dusty acoustic guitar in the corner waiting for me to come pick it up and breathe life into those old songs again. or maybe it’s something i have yet to experience and won’t realize what it is until it finally happens. i am reminded of a verse from the indigo girls’ song “love’s recovery”, which pretty much sums up this feeling in a few lines, and which was exactly how i would have described that period of my life. i only wish i could have written is as well as emily saliers did:

There I am in younger days.
Stargazing
Painting picture perfect maps
Of how my life and love would be
Not counting the unmarked paths of misdirection
My compass, faith in love’s perfection
I missed a million miles of road I should have seen.

what it all comes down to, is that we all serve some purpose in life and even when we think we’ve found ours, something else may come along that takes precedence over that. or maybe it just feels better (or worse, depending on your perspective). but until we make that choice, we may never know exactly what it is we should or could have done with our lives, or how we may have changed the world with just one idea. even the things that distract us ultimately shape who we are and how we see the world. hopefully we will all make choices that make the world better for the next generation and beyond.

I lay my head on the railroad track
Stare at the sky all painted up
Your train is gone, won’t be coming back
See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines
Just a guy made of dots and lines

Two years ago moved from my town
I was looking up past the city lights
But the city lights got in my way
See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines
Just a guy made of dots and lines

I found my mind on the ground below
I was looking down, it was looking back
I was in the sky all dressed in black
See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines
Just a guy made of dots and lines
Just a guy made of dots and lines

Can you hear what I see in the sky?
Can you hear what I see in the sky?
Can you hear what I see in the sky?

i spent christmas night in the last place anyone wants to be: the hospital ER. my cousins were on the way to visit and were rear-ended by a motorcycle who failed to stop when my cousins pulled to the side and put their hazard lights on. this is how it happened:

apparently one of my cousins, who has a 1yr old, pulled over because the baby was acting sick. i am not clear whether or not this means that the baby was spitting up, or choking or what. all i know is that he and his wife pulled over to take care of the baby. his father, who was driving a minivan with 5 of his kids in the van, pulled over on the left side of the road and walked across to his son to find out why he stopped. they talked for a minute or so, and the father walked back to the van. at this time, some guy on a 1980’s yamaha motorcycle did not stop or slow down and plowed right into the van. the biker was killed, if not instantly, then very soon after impact. four of my cousins were taken to the ER to be x-rayed, cat scanned, and whatever other tests needed to be run. they were all eventually released when it was clear that there was no lasting damage at all.

the one i really feel for is the motorcyclist. his family had to go to the ER as well. only in his case, they were shown the inside of the morgue instead of getting to take him home at the end of the night. it’s really had me thinking and appreciating just how lucky i have been to have lived to my current age without any major problems (*knock on wood*). it’s also been on my mind that no matter how well prepared you are for life, something like this can happen and completetly change the entire situation. not only that, but it’s completely out of your control despite your best efforts. the one thing i will always take with me from this experience is to savor as many of the moments i have together with my family, because they may not be coming back next time…..