Some fun stuff to listen too...

So hopefully most of my close friends have already found my blog...if not... HURRY!

Today I decided to touch on the things I love to listen to.

1) New music...I mean really new. Something I've never heard from an artist I've never heard of. This type of stuff really gets me excited to write music and also makes me want to share this new music with my friends whether it's good or bad. I just love to get feed back on this new stuff I've heard as it helps build opinions of my friends which I can use for later judgment.

2) The Rain: ok seriously... rain drops hitting the roof are so relaxing and though thunder and lightning can be freaky, I love when the power goes out and all that's left is some wine...a couple candles, and someone that closely resembles my wife by candle light (grrrr).

3) People complaining. This is the weird one that made me want to type this. I LOVE hearing people bitch about stuff that 9/10 times does not matter. Example: I heard this woman freaking out about people driving too fast in the work parking lot. She had so many arguments that seemed so rational to her but sounded completely insane to me, thus making me laugh which is why I enjoy this.

4) My inner monologue. I am pretty funny on the inside. Some times I tell myself (internally of course, I don't walk around saying "self, blah blah"...then I'd be crazy.).. I tell myself a little joke or something funny like "dude check out that crazy chick talking about speeding in the parking lot...you should go hand her a twinkie and then walk away without saying anything...wait, do you have a twinkie? Whatever happened to twinkies? I feel like I haven't seen one in a while. Dude, check out that crazy chick...""... is that weird to tell myself that?

How about you? What do you listen to? Or who/what do you try not to listen to?

You're a loser...

At what point do you realize that you are constantly a disappointment to your friends, family, and the entire human race? You can't hold a job, you treat everyone like crap, you assume assume assume assume...and most importantly I can't stand you.

Some day you'll wake up and realize that you can't just fuck with people's emotions in such a way that leaves us hanging by a thread wondering what you're going to do next; only to show us exactly how anti-climatic our wait was. Please just do me a huge favor and go away...for real. Don't just disappear for a while and show up in a couple months remorseful over the wrongs that you've done. I want you gone and I want you gone now.

Love ya guys! Hope this inspires you to open up a can of "leave me alone" on someone you dislike.

You catch more bees with an old wooden shed...

SO I had freakin bees at my house and it was putting a huge red light at the intersection where my new "remodeled" house meets my old 50's house with bad plumbing. I had to get rid of the bees that appeared to be coming from underneath on of the storage sheds that my grandfather erected to house all of my mother's most "prized possessions" (like my old ass clothes and report cards from some grade where "e" was the best rating you could receive).

I called the "BEE MASTER" who apparently will come and hot box the hole where the bees are for $125... and then he can actually remove the honey comb for $25 per 15 minutes it would take him to take it away. After inspecting the hive the Bee Master concluded that the floor of the shed must be removed for successful "treatment" to occur. So now I have to get my pack rat mother to come clean out her storage shed so I can get rid of the bees so I can get some mexicans to come and tear down the shed that I don't want because it has bees in the first place.

This is where the cool stuff happens. While mother, my wife and my father are all at my house cleaning out the shed; my wife removes a box which subsequently tips over and out spills a multitude of sexual instruction books that apparently were my mother's (FUCK!). My wife proceeds to send the picture to my brother and to make sure we are adequately uncomfortable, and that sends me into a stir that concludes with all 4 (four) storage shed being torn down along with our entire brick wall...

 

Who let the dogs out?

I walk out to my living area and there sitting on the couch awaiting my embrace is Dolly, my socially challenged bully basset with a heart of gold and complete disregard for her physical well being. 

I've grown to love this dog even more as of late since she had fell ill on Monday and had to go 36 hours with no food and hooked up to an IV for fluids. I've never seen so much pain and sadness in a dogs eyes, and it tore me up. She is pretty much just like me; she eats fast, speaks too loudly and too much, gets really excited around her friends and family, loves running around, and prefers all the attention to be on her. 

Then there's Pablo. I'm not really sure Pablo is even a dog, perhaps an alien (my wife's hypothesis) but I think the most likely scenario is that he is a little many in a furry suit. He is just like The Muff (my wife) in that he prefers "Chill-axin" to almost any other activity on earth, likes being alone with his thoughts and gets really annoyed with Dolly or me. I'm 100% certain that these 2 dogs were the only two dogs on Earth that could fit in our family the way they do, and I'm very happy that we have them. 

So why do we like dogs so much? How did they become "man's best friend"? What do they really want from us? All these questions strike me on an almost daily basis and I just wish that I could understand my "kids" on a deeper level in the hopes that I may be able to make them as happy as I have become with them.

My Music = YOUR Music

In the coming months I will be speaking with some of the youth of America on my song writing style, process, motivation, etc. I've been starting to think about what really goes into how I write a song and I've discovered that the way I write a song is correlated directly to my personality type.  (Good listening for this can be found at www.myspace.com/thebreakdownmusic)

I basically start with a mood: Any mood will do, IE when I feel angry I want to write about it; but here's where it gets crazy and my whole "chicken vs egg" argument is solved. I write my music FIRST, then lyrics. My determines the soundtrack that comes on in my head. I have this weird internal musical that is going 24/7, like the song I hear while I'm walking down the street. Sometimes it's a song that already exists, or the one playing in my Pod while running, but when that "original" one comes out I write. 

Once I've constructed the "mood music" I can now make a flailing attempt at formatting some sort of verbal language to explain my mood and the reasons that I feel the way I do or how/why someone else would feel this way. Then the band adds the punctuation and we have a song. 

Thinking about this made me think about how the song writing process occurs in every day life for me. Making breakfast is like a song being written; my mood determines what I want and then I express my desire in the form of a meal. Allot of times I just "play" a "cover song" by making cereal or oatmeal...but sometimes I scramble some eggs with some tofu and cheese and put it in some pita bread with hot sauce and I've created some weird new song that some people will love and others will hate. 

So how do you create music in your life?

Running Thoughts

As I was on my afternoon run today (BTW, totally tracked by the Runkeeper ap...if you run, get this) I started a thought process that would hopefully take my mind off of the scorching heat and help me to become mentally "centered" while I tortured my lower extremities.

The thought that popped into my head was that of a recent chain e-mail I had received from a "to remain unknown" relative.  The email went on to explain how Michael Richards "AKA Kramer" defended his off color remarks (in court) towards a certain ethnic group during one of his stand up routines. He stated that he was curious as to why when a white person uses a derogatory term towards another ethnic group (ex; "Beaner") it is considered racism, where as when an ethnic minority calls a white person a "cracker" it is not. He continued on with these examples and it brought me to the following point: It is racist, we are all racist. I'll explain.

The difference between an ethnic minority using a disgraceful term towards the majority is that historically the majority has used such terms to bring said ethnic groups down, while the minority group has used their converse "slurs" on the majority group to help bring the majority down to their level. It is merely semantics, but it ultimately made me think that over all as Americans we tend to complain too much. 

If you don't like how someone treats you, then avoid them. I have strong feelings towards our right to free speech in this country and I guard it as my most sacred. I don't see why so many groups (conservative, liberal, white, black, short, tall) are constantly trying to change another group to make themselves feel more included. Just live your life and try to do what you believe is the right thing and do not press your beliefs on others. What's so wrong with that? If you don't like people that hate your group of people, avoid them... and vice versa. Anyhow. I'm gonna go eat...tell me what you think.

Love ya. 

D