ghosts, thoughts, and another sleepless night

Yar, be writin' this at the wee crack a deh mornin'.  ...Yar.

Here's a little emo gibberish for you all, and a peek inside my head at 2 a.m. this morning. :)

  A million questions, a thousand inquiries, and not one brings comfort to the present state of circumstances.

Instead of tired, I’m wired, sitting stark awake with a throbbing head, while my girl sleeps soundly beside me, exhausted.

I feel stung, strung out over a canyon of impossibility.

Some days I feel that my Art has left me, while others it swells up inside me but is limited by life, bills, and assignments.

I feel like I’ve been sleeping my whole life, and now I am awake.  What did I miss?

How many hours did I waste playing video games when I could have been studying, or refining my art?  How many hours could I have spent learning the science of human motion and the art of the Martial Art, instead of having Mario make that jump?  Why live in an artificial world community if no one wants to talk to you?  Why pay to exist there?

Why don’t we wake up every day and pursue excellence in all that we do?  Why is procrastination a popular sport, accepted, and cool?  Do we actually expect everyone else to learn english if we refuse to learn Spanish?  

A million inquiries and not one brings comfort to the present state of circumstances: I am not the man I want to be.

This is a broken record of broken promises made inside my head, my heart, my soul, and I am no DJ.  It’s time for a remix.  Mix master I am, scaling sound and size, down to fit my eyes, my hands, my time.  Kiss childhood goodbye, burned by dollar signs and the Pull, strong and pure.  PUll me away from the past, my present, toward the future, where my time is my own, my desire can be shared, and my Art can be found.  Where I can express opwnly, artfully, and above all, with maturity.  The boy is dead.  At last, the boy is dead..

Rianomus wanders, a pale strip of moonlight dancing

try prancing

over hills and mountains

playing games with the gaijin

and taunting at the sleeping sun.

Rianomus wanders

cloak billowing, like a dead nation’s flag on on a hill of corpses..

Come silence.  Be my guide, feed me the deafening year.  Surround me, spill over my shadows, under my skin, rattle my bones, fill my lungs, and find my heart.  Here, within my blood, tear down the walls of doubt, shame, and fear.  Come my silence, be my sword and shield.  Temper my skin to stone, so that I may stand against the fires of hell and change.  Turn my muscles to fire, that I may blaze the way for others to only follow, yet wash it all away for a single woman’s touch.  Build me, my silence, calme my mind, speak words and melodies to my sleepless imagination, let me rise your warrior, your instrument, your god.  I am ready.  

Stand and fight, for by the end, You Will Chant My Name.

Well, I’m spent again.  Good therapy.

End log one.  Goodnight.

Stage Fright TOO

So I was reading Eric's stuff and the fact popped into my head about how I was recently on stage, and you should all check it out. I totally forgot about it until someone resposted the video on Facebook. Here's the link if you are curious:http://uconn.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=536167059841&subj=9006199

I'm sad that they only got the latter third, because the first sections worked amazingly well and were a lot of fun. The sketch is called "Bulbous Bouffant" by the Vestibules, introduced to me long ago by none other than my crazy eldest brother (yeah, you guessed it, Eric).

Enjoy!
Adam

Cold and warm chills = fever

I don't think I have ever been this sick before in college. I can barely speak, my head is pounding, and I'm cold all the time. Well, I suppose that's better than last night. Last night I was BOILING. Either way, I am not healthy, and it makes it difficult to concentrate on papers right now. This may be the first time I ever have to miss Wind Ensemble, which, if you don't know, NEVER happens, out of fear of bursting into flames.

Dagnabbit, it even hurts to yawn.

In other news, I started a composition for real, now. The tentative title is "Skirmishes." It promises to be quite a project. The smaller project is a book of Etudes for Bass Tuba, some of which I hope to play for solo convocation credit.

Shaina's doing well except for a stomach bug (yeah, I know, we match), and we moved our Valentine's Day to the weekend so nothing can bother us. :)

Pledging classes are in full swing for the Fraternity and Sorority, and, in case you were wondering, I DO have a little one. :) Crazy, huh?

Hoping everyone is healthy,
Adam

Summer settling in and a new living space.

So it didn't occur to me that I had summer vacation until after returning from Cape Cod with the Brotherhood and Sisterhood. Now that was a fun time. Imagine just three days of drinking (or not drinking), hot tubs, freezing pools, heart to hearts on the beach (and the jetty), and, in my case, serenading the water with a drum cadence on my new djembe. It was a spiritual, sometimes stressful, taking care of drunk people, meaningless cuddle fest-ful time. Strange thing was, I packed for six days of fun...when the trip was only three. I was told this on Day 2. Oh well, I had plenty of spare socks to make up for all the sand and water damage.

I've settled in to a futile attempt each morning to rise at 8AM, sometimes 7AM, but I always just end up going back to sleep. I blame going to bed at 12:30. I know it isn't smart, but I do it anyway. 10:00. Maybe 10:30. The few times I went to bed that early during the school term, I woke up rested, relaxed, and energized. I loved it. So why don't I just do it again?

The majority of my time right now is spent relaxing (hey, after this past semester, I think I've earned it), but my version of relaxing may not match the definition of the rest of America. It's more like procrastinating with a purpose. I'm playing through FF Tactics to the bitter end (like getting all the secrets), so I can put it away and not think What If. I'm also playing through Taiko Drum Master (thank you, brothers), to see if I can unlock anything else. I was very sad to learn that we had already unlocked all the songs. You'd think they'd have more than 31, especially when one of those is "Foster's Medley." :(
Business: I have been trying to accomplish a number of things so far in this break. I'll just run down the list: improving ear training (I barely passed with a D in Harmony IV = not spiffy), reread both Musical Theory books, read/listen ahead for the last semester of Music History, arrange "Hands" by Jewel and "White Shadows" by Coldplay, for the A Capella group, reorganize everything about Service for Tau Beta Sigma, write music for Dan's campaign (one song done!), order merchandise for next UCMB season, and successfully move to my new house in Coventry, CT.

Oh yeah, I've got a house for next school year. No basement, no upstairs, just one of those three-bedroom, huge kitchen, small living room with a giant fireplace permanently closed sitting in the middle of the wall kinda' places. It's very good rent, and I got the big room. :)
And a few words about Dan's campaign. We've been, as a DnD group, exploring my epic campaign, a few side mini-quests with Rob, as well as his epic story campaign, but Dan's is different. See, Rob and I were existing in a world still very much akin to Lord of the Rings. Dan and his imagination, is more toward futuristic western. And, he built it from scratch. It is, in a few words, a welcome shift. Plus, it's loads of fun. I've got guns. Big ones. More on that later, now that my internet is back.

I need to go exercise. Have a nice day.
-Adam

PS: Watch Heroes. Holy cow. Watch. Heroes. Tonight at 9:00.

Sick as a Canis Minor

I am sick. I dislike this thoroughly. I wish I had something more interesting to tell you at this point, but my head hurts, I have a bit of a cough, and a possible sore on my tongue; all of which not as condusive (sp) to playing tuba, or the horn for that matter.

I can say that I am maintaining at least 3.5 of my 4 New Year's Resolutions. The organizing of my room and life is becoming ridiculous, but it might just be necessary. My left hand's nails at least are clipped not by teeth. Flossing, firming up gums, mouthwash, and a sensodyne toothbrush keep the "take better care of teeth" category running full strength. And an ab workout everyday is helping, at least my ego anyway.

Resolutions aside, practicing has been lackluster this week. I didn't practice Monday, Tuesday's shortlived exercise was awful, Wednesday was short but had glimpses of the god-tuba player from last week, especially at the Basketball Game, and yesterday was the best of the week, but still not the level that the week previous was.

Can I just take a moment and rant about my Basketball Team? This is the UConn Men's Team. Now, granted that it is a team comprised of all Sophomores and Freshman, so they are young, I can see why they acted the way they did on Wednesday. But when every shot you make, no matter how cool it looks in your head, does NOT go in, it usually means that you need to return to fundamental basketball. Every shot, every single shot, did not go in, until maybe the second half. It was ugly. The majority of the game was comprised of foul shots, making it longer than any game I have ever attended. If anything, they'll learn from this game...I hope.

Back to practicing. Thanks for reading.
Adam

Let the dice roll.

"Mercy? You wanted mercy!? I'm chaotic/neutral!" --some crazy guy on the internet.

So DnD is back in full swing. I must say, though, that it has a tendency to consume some people. Thankfully, not us. Schoolwork, shindigs, and other commitments (like concerts) take precedence. However, I have now performed a nerdism.

You see, I've noticed that almost everyone in our little group of "questers" owns a pair of their own Roleplaying Dice. In fact, so much that I found myself more often than not using their dice rather than the DM's. This became confusing, so we had to call out each of our throws, which only helped mildly. So:

Yeah. I got dice.

Goldish auburn dice. Only 4 dollars online, so no biggie. I just feel like an even larger nerd than before. BUT: I'm not any different than a gaming group that meets each week, especially when we punctuate dungeon crawls with games like Bang!, Fluxx, and Chrononauts. It's fun, and a welcome reprieve from the constant barrage of musicality.

Just finished with half of my midterms. Vocal tech had us sing and then get critiqued from the class, then sing again (A-). Linguistics was 35 multiple-choice questions in an hour on lecture material; no problem. The Beast this past week was Music History; 30 musical pieces memorized ("name that tune" essentially), and about 1500 years worth of historical facts. Woot. (I think I got about a B, and I hear there's a massive curve :) ).

Well, I have go eat dinner, then work on, what else, Music History, head to an interview, then practice my keister off.

Over and Out,
Adam

PS: Wind Ensemble concert on Thursday at 8:00 PM. And I have solos.

Who wants to be a geek?

Quote of the week:

"I salute you, you ferocious animals!" -- Major Victory

I have a new guilty pleasure. It consists of now 7 crazy people. I call them crazy because they want to be Superheroes. I call them crazy because I am crazy, and I wouldn't mind doing what they are doing.

The first two tasks were nothing special. One they had to change from street clothes to superhero garb inconspicuously, then "race to the finish." However, a crying little girl was positioned just before the finish. Very few of the heroes stopped to help her; she was the goal.

The second major task had the heroes try to traverse a back yard to the back door of a little old lady's house because she had forgotten her key. Thing was, that two very strong, very angry trained attack dogs laid between the fence and the door. So the heroes donned protective suits (with their colors and names on the back), and took on the ferocious animals. It was a satisfying play-by-play of events as the canines plowed over and dragged most of the heroes (all of the women, in fact). When I say 'satisfying', I am referring to my least favorite hero: Cell Phone Girl.

First of all, she runs like an idiot; similar to how some girls run across traffic at school, their hands making little windmills as they hop forward on alternating toes. She looks like she's half-assing high-stepping. Anyway, she took three "steps" before the dogs knocked her over. She gave up 4 seconds in. Yeah, Stan wasn't pleased with her.

I wonder what her Superpower was supposed to be, Unlimited Minutes?

The other element I am excited about is Stan Lee's control over the heroes. At the end of last Thursday's episode he grilled into one of the characters, the Iron Enforcer, who was by far the most egotistical, strong, and misread hero there. He doesn't wear a shirt, and carries a massive gun, with one 'robotic' arm to balance. He was booted on some strange terms, like "You're not very well liked around here" and "You've been on the chopping block every time so far; that's not good." I thought it was a strange basis to let someone go on, but...

With only a few minutes left in the show, we see the Enforcer carrying his stuff down the street. He passes a junk pile, with a strategically placed TV Set. Stan Lee's face appears on the monitor and he talks to the Enforcer. He tells him that he finally figured out what was bugging him about the Iron Enforcer's costume makeover.

Turns out that the Iron Enforcer makes a lousy superhero...
But he makes a great Supervillain.
He gets shoved into a van and emerges in a full cape and cowl.

Ha ha, I'm still geeking out about it.

Over and Out,
Adam

PS: Expect a few rants/editorials to pop up before school.