What is this song? I wrote it in C but then transposed it to B Flat to better match my voice. Then I had a hell of a time singing the 3/4 part, so maybe I should have left it in C? I dunno. It's not really like anything I've ever done before, which is good. You gotta evolve as an artist. At least, that's what they tell me. I don't know who "they" is.
It's the Royal Road, baby! Sure, J-Pop might have abused the hell out of this chord progression, but I haven't used it much! Took my new piano out for a spin. The guitars were all played on my cheap Fender acoustic; for the dueling solos, I ran them through Reason and distorted them. I like the concept of change. Change is good, because change is life. To resist change is to be destroyed. Change and adapt. I hath begun my career as a motivational speaker/life-coach. Perhaps I can do better than George Costanza.
Do you want to move?
Do you want to pick through your belongings
Pack it all up
and start again down the street?
This house is my home
Where I had my children
Where we scrapped ice off the walls
And learned to have space.
When I sleep at night
I worry about leaving my past
And all the memories we made here.
But shouldn't we change?
If we fight against the current
We drown and sink beneath the surface
There is no way to add to a person
without embracing the difference
between the past and the present.
I know that nothing will ever stay the same
Life is not a picture
A painting
A screenshot
Or a photo.
Last night I had a dream
of a different woman and I
doing homework
In another home
With another child.
What is this strange reality?
A different universe?
An omen?
Or a simple flight of fancy?
I don't know
But maybe
it is okay
To move.
Kind of proud of this little piano instrumental I wrote on my new keyboard. A piano is so much more powerful than a guitar when it comes to songwriting. It's so much easier to adjust chord shapes with an extra hand!
It takes a decent amount of hubris to name your song "Rock 'n' Roll" but it's on par for the genre, am I right? An oldie that I rerecorded this week. Just some simple three chord rock with lyrics about chasing that youthful feeling.
There was a lot of whining about the price of eggs during the 2024 Presidential election. Google's bullshit AI tells me that the average price of eggs in the US during January was 4.95, a 15 percent increase over the previous month. Of course, bird flu is to blame, but this is Trump's America, and facts don't matter, only feelings. Americans felt pessimistic about the post-Covid economic recovery, so they voted in an authoritarian with an inflationary agenda. This is because America is full of dumb fuckers. Last night, Trump announced that the delayed 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada would finally go into effect. He also raised Chinese tariffs from 10 percent to 20 percent. Given that America is the largest economy in the world, and that we consume around a quarter of what the world produces while having only five percent of the world's population, this... isn't good. If Americans were dissatisfied with Biden's economy, I can't imagine they'll be happy with Trump's inflationary policies. Those tariffs will be paid by American consumers, who will either bite the bullet and go home with less money in their bank accounts, or reduce consumption, shrinking the economy. Tariffs are protective measures meant to jump-start domestic industry or protect a vulnerable part of the economy. It's not ideal that all of the world's microchips are made in Taiwan, but it takes a lot of time and money to build a chip fabricator--around three years, 10 billion dollars, and 6000 construction workers, according to Intel. So it makes no sense to put blanket tariffs on Chinese electronics (most electronics are assembled in China) when it takes an extraordinary amount of time and money to build your own chips. The consumer is just going to end up paying a lot more for electronics. This is Econ 101, but Trump seems to not understand this. My own personal theory is that the tax cut Congressional Republicans are preparing will be paid for by tariffs, and they're counting on Americans being dumb enough to not realize that they're footing the bill. One of the advantages Republicans have over Democrats is that they realize that the average voter is an idiot, so while I don't think consumers will ignore how the price of everything drastically increased immediately after Trump took office, it's a gamble that may pay off, considering how dumb everyone is, and how Trump was reelected despite running on a Destroy America agenda.
The big, dumb fucker in chief also announced last night that he was ending aid to Ukraine. This comes after Trump and Vice President Vance personally berated and insulted Ukrainian President Zelenskyy while television crews filmed last Friday. Vance accused Zelenskyy of disrespect and ingratitude, despite it being obvious to anyone watching that Vance and Trump were the rude assholes in the room. Former Ukraine supporting Republicans like closeted homosexual hypocrite Lindsay Graham seized the bait and threw Zelenskyy under the bus as their dear leader desired. With the abandonment of Ukraine, Trump signaled to the rest of the world that America will not honor its commitments to allies (Trump wants to get out of NATO) and will now support dictators like Vladimir Putin, despite the historical animosity between Russia and the US. Now America has always been full of shit when it comes to international conflicts--the Iraq war never found any weapons of mass destruction, Vietnam was a nonsensical bloodbath, and the Afghanistan war was all for naught --but we've never outright abandoned democracy and our post-World War 2 allies in favor of an oligarch like Putin. Then again, we've never had a shadow President like Elon Musk dissolving government agencies and illegally firing government employees while harvesting the personal info of Americans.
I haven't touched on Trump's deportation agenda or his illegal executive orders or the coming fight over the budget and whether or not the President has the right to do whatever he wants with Treasury funds (he doesn't). None of this matters because although the signs are there, most Americans haven't noticed a difference yet. Ignorance is bliss, right? If you're plugged into the right wing grifter echo chamber, maybe you even think things are getting better. I'm here to tell you, you big, dumb fucking idiot, that things aren't okay, and you're going to notice the effects of Donald Trump's destruction of the American government and economy sooner rather than later. There is a price for ignorance, and there is a price for moral apathy, and there is a price for being fat and lazy and stupid. Fiction couldn't conjure a better physical representation of all of America's faults than Donald Trump. Now that we finally have a President that represents the worst of us, will we get what we deserve? Because if you take away freedom and democracy and civil rights and hope for the future, you're left with greed, gluttony, consumerism, and sloth. The latter isn't much to build a country on, is it?
Wake up, you dumb fucks. You wanted to fuck over the rest of us and drink our liberal tears, but in the process, you're getting fucked and you're fucking things up for your own children and anyone else that might care about the future. Stupidity is a privilege you've been afforded until now, but I'm taking it away for the good of the public. In the words of Dean Wormer from Animal House "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."
Here's some Rage, because that's why I'm feeling lately.
I've realized that my initial review of God of War: Ragnarok was a little too negative after having played it for an additional sixteen or so hours. Despite being an iterative sequel, it does do a lot to expand the basic gameplay, at least after thirty hours or so. You get a new weapon, the Draupnir Spear, which adds a lot to your arsenal, and a huge new optional area opens up in Vandeheim called the Crater, which is full of quests. This area is not only the best in the game, it pretty much is the game. I think I've spent well over ten hours hunting dragons and tangling with other beasties in the Crater, and the option to free-roam while still enjoying story-based questing really makes Ragnarok enjoyable. As for the spear, Kratos now has three weapons, all with two runic-based heavy attacks and specific combos, along with his sword hilt ability and his shield, giving the player a plethora of options for any combat situation. The exploding spears are a nice ranged option, and the ability to build up might by repeated spear strikes makes the Draupnir my default weapon most of the time. I'd also like to compliment Santa Monica on Ragnarok's visuals, which are stellar. I mashed the screenshot key over and over again while taking advantage of the photo mode. Now, after fifty hours in, my opinion of Ragnarok has changed. It might be a safe sequel, but it's really fun and well-designed, and anyone searching for a strong single-player odyssey won't be disappointed.
The winter freeze is upon us, and so it's been a big month for musical creativity. The Sack of Troy is a elegy for Hector and all of those who fight reluctantly. Had a lot of fun with the guitars on this one. I used my T57 Tube Screamer with the strat. Initially I had this song at 210 bpm, but I had to slow the drums down to 195 bpm because I couldn't get the bass part right. The lyrics are below.
Give my sons all the coins that I’ve earned
Give my wife my books that I want burned
On the shores they’ve gathered armies
Long of lance and short of heartbeats
You can’t hide yourself any longer
They have swords that have your number
You can’t hide yourself any longer
They have swords that have your number
From the walls I see the blood bath
Children scream the names of fallen
“This one’s armor will go to you,”
“This one’s memories will fall to you,”
You can’t hide yourself any longer
They have swords that have your number
You can’t hide yourself any longer
They have swords that have your number
Around my walls Achilles chased me
Eyes of fire and heart of stone
I did face him though it killed me
He wouldn’t give away my body
You can’t hide yourself any longer
They have swords that have your number
You can’t hide yourself any longer
They have swords that have your number
Names preserved in poet’s lines
Echoed across the seas of time
“Do you remember why we fell
into a churning mass of knives?
Do you remember why we died?”
They can’t hide themselves any longer
We have swords that have their number
They can’t hide themselves any longer
We have swords that have their number
An old instrumental dating back to my Texas days. The original used a Digitech Whammy pedal for the rhythm chord progression; on this recording, I used a Pitchfork set to fifths.I don't remember where I heard the story of Lucretia, but it was a myth that made an impression on me.
Wrote and recorded this last night in a frenzy. One positive to the dissolution of my country is that I've been very creative! Went for a 60's feel, with the guitars and Iggy Pop beat.
I've put almost forty hours into Vampire Survivor, a bullet-hell roguelike with pixelated graphics and a nostalgic Castlevania theme so obvious that they released an official Castlevania DLC. Gameplay consists of wandering around an expansive map while ever-increasing waves of enemies attack. Your character auto-attacks, so all you have to do is move and chose from a huge selection of active weapons and passive powerups that random chance offers you every time you level up. If you pair the right weapon with the right passive ability, you'll eventually evolve your weapon into a stronger form. This is gameplay in a nutshell--Vampire Survivors is a very simple game--but the sheer amount of unlockables, from weapons, stages, characters, and relics (items on the map the confer a permanent bonus; e.g., a map, the ability to reroll random weapon/passive ability drops) ensures that you'll always have a reason for another run. The dopamine rush from having your character absolutely annihilate hundreds of enemies--their deaths leaving behind gems of various shades that serve as experience--is very real, and I've often wondered whether Vampire Survivor can be considered a manipulative game. Its designer worked in the casino industry and you can tell. When you kill a boss, a chest will drop that contains anywhere from three to five random rewards. A little piece of crescendoing music plays and fireworks shoot out of the chest, increasing your anticipation. Were there predatory microtransactions, I would think I'd hate this game, but Vampire Survivors is like a gambling ode to the simple games of the NES generation. It doesn't have a story or high production values. It simply massages your lizard brain and lets you relax and forget America's downward spiral into authoritarianism (putting out the positive vibes!).
Contrast the simple mechanics/indie production values of Vampire Survivor with God of War: Ragnarok, Sony's big-budget sequel to their 2018 God of War reboot. Ragnarok is a perfect example of a modern triple-A singleplayer game. It's gorgeous, well-voice acted, plays well, and is about as safe a sequel as you could imagine. Developers Santa Monica have added very little new from a gameplay perspective, other than more time playing as Atreus, who serves as the story's focal point. The narrative tension between Kratos and Atreus from the first game is absent, even though Ragnarok tries to replicate this dynamic. Kartos's story from GOW 2018 is just more interesting--Atreus finding his place in the Norse pantheon isn't as compelling as wondering whether Kratos will learn how to parent his son or revert to the monster he was in the original games. Without a really compelling story, Ragnarok becomes just a series of little dungeons and simple puzzles. I wish they'd tinkered with the camera or given Kratos some of his old powers back, or maybe made Atreus more fun to play. It's not that I don't like the game--I've spent almost thirty hours in Ragnarok--but it feels like something I've played before. It's interesting that an indie title like Vampire Survivor can suck up more of my time than a big budget action game like God of War, but that seems to be the situation. Sometimes all we need is a little reversion to the basics. Still, I'd like to commend the PC port of Ragnarok, because it runs really well (triple digit framerates at 1440p maxed out with DLAA on an RTX 3080 and a Ryzen 7 5800x), especially seeing how Spider-man 2's PC port is such a disaster.
God of War: Ragnarok screenshots below (because they're so pretty):
What is this song? I wrote it in C but then transposed it to B Flat to better match my voice. Then I had a hell of a time singing the 3/4 ...
