George Carlin

George Carlin, comedic genius, died Monday afternoon from heart failure.
After all this talk about not feeling emotions anymore, this is the one event that's driven me almost to tears.
Perhaps it's all the other, subconsciously repressed emotions all coming out now. Perhaps we now find out where my true priorities lie, a comedian I've never met.

Whatever, this is still a terrible event. He was one of the few men still alive I wanted to 'meet', if only seeing them from a distance. This is the second or third time this has happened; where someone I'd love to meet dies before I get the chance to even see them. I had tickets to his concert a few months ago, but my plans changed and I couldn't go.
Josef Zawinul, famous jazz fusion keyboardist, died last September, before his tour came to Virginia.

I'd love to say some sensitive shit about how 'life is short' and such; but I have upwards of 70 years left. I got plenty of time. I guess the moral is that with the death of a person, you lose all they gave/could give, especially in the case of entertainers as original and unique as George.

But I'd just like to show my respect for this man, his beliefs, and his talents the only way I really can. He was a genius, both comedic and sociological, and even had the ability to talk about the worst cuss words, then turn around and host/narrate a kid's show. I do own all his books, so If anyone would like to borrow them, I highly recommend them; especially if you haven't experienced Carlin's unique brand of comedy. I like the quote from John Hargrave, another comedian, "He'll be remembered for "Seven Words You Can't Say On TV," but that's like the Beatles being remembered for "Hey Jude." ". It's very true-he was so prolific and original.

I'll leave with an anecdote presented by Hargrave, from his friend.

I found myself on a plane with George Carlin. We were both riding in first class. Before the plane took off, I had to endure people reaching over me to get his autograph, he signed them all and was very gracious about the whole thing.

Immediately after takeoff, the flight attendant came and took our dinner orders. It became apparent that Mr. Carlin had planned his trip to be a working trip. He asked for his meal to be brought at the last possible second before the descent to land. He wanted to get as much work done as possible on his Macbook and didn't want to be interrupted by the whole dinner ordeal.

I knew that, if I were going to get a conversation with George Carlin, it would be at that moment: when his meal arrived. So I waited and worked on my own laptop. Finally, four and a half hours into the flight, the attendant brought out his meal. I shut down my computer and took my opportunity. I turned to him and said, "Mr. Carlin, I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you not disturbing me during this flight and allowing me to finish my work. It's so hard to get things done on airplanes and I really do appreciate it."

George Carlin busted out laughing.

Once you've got George Carlin laughing, you can do almost anything, right? I continued on, and we had a pleasant conversation. I commented to Carlin that I was amazed at his observational skills, that most people don't notice the little things around them. Carlin disagreed immediately. He said, "On the contrary, EVERYONE has great observational skills. Otherwise, no one would know what I was talking about when I say something like, 'You ever open up the refrigerator and...'. If no one noticed things, no one would find it funny."

Carlin then revealed his secret. He opened his Macbook and showed me his folders: a detailed filing system with over 2500 categories where he stored every observation that he had made over the years. "Everyone notices everything," he said, "the difference between them and me is that they don't know what to do with it once they notice it. I do. Most people just forget about it, until I mention it again in my bit and make them laugh."

He was one of the few last original greats of entertainment. After this, our feeble grasp on decent entertainment slips, as it all falls back onto standardized, computer-generated crap that the masses are subtly forced to love.

3:00 AM OD on caffiene mints and orange soda

So as you may or may not know, my father's getting re-married this coming Monday. While he's stressing and sometimes freaking, I am, as usual, unaffected by the current situation. I've noticed this happening more and more recently; I just can't... process... events and situations into emotions, I barely get excited for things I've been waiting forever for and that mean a lot to me. Very few events and moments hold a special place, that make me happy they happened, or make me disgusting just remembering. I almost feel as if I'm in a stupor, or possibly not meant for this time and place, definitely not tiny Greene County.
It's not necessarily 'wanderlust', as much as I like traveling, more that just wishing I had something to do now to be able to begin the rest of my life; this just seems like the dull, redundant series of events that are made seemingly mandatory by society. I wish I could just go to college now for music, not worrying about the basic plot of a book I hate and will never come up in conversation, or some meaningless date of the birth of some guy who means nothing to me, or some meaningless math equation I'll never need to use or know about.
I just wish this stupid 'no child left behind' would go away; it's hurting everyone, passing people who shouldn't just so everyone looks good. I also wish there was some way to describe your situation to strangers, even if you shouldn't care what they think of the tall, chubby guy wearing makeup, a long dress, and far-too small high heels buying ice cream at the local joint. Back to the school, kids should be able to choose ALL classes they want to take, not having any mandatory (well of course, you'd had to of taken Algebra 2 for Precalc, etc. but I mean full tracts of courses). I'm sure this would lead to many taking few to none classes, but these are the people who would end up head fry chef at McDonalds anyway, so that's class time and teacher's stress levels saved. While it's nice to of learned things in BRVGS and other classes I have taken, I'll never need the information. I'm sure Megan, if you decide to be a volcanologist, will not have to know about the history of European Religions at any point in time, but I'd imagine you would enjoy learning about them.
Alas, the government tells us this is how it is, so we accept it.
Alas, the Bible tells us this is how it is, so we accept it.
Alas, our neighbor tells us this is how it is, so we accept it.
I'm tired of the 'socially acceptable' bullshit. These things we spend years of our lives so that new coworker doesn't assume you're an idiot because you didn't go to a full four-year college.
People need to base their ideas on others on the person, not being pedantic about things, and listening to why they only went to college for one year, why they don't know the history of New Guinea.
Knowledge only needs to be known for the task you do. The rest, basically, is all bullshit mating rituals and customs.
Thank you, Andrea, for being so different and so loving, so beautiful and smart, so unique (just like everyone else), and understanding me, caring for me, and (if possible) understanding the above rant, and thanks for being so awesome. I love you.
Thank you, everyone else, for maybe embracing change and living not just for the sake of living.

Oh; and almost forgot why I posted in the first place; My dad's wedding.
I'm the director of music for it, and they don't want the traditional wedding march. Any ideas for what could be used instead?
I was thinking Beatles, one of the more acoustic ballad-y songs.
But if anyone else has a suggestion, I'm happy to listen.

News, Finally

Alright; It's two AM, I just downed some unidentified carbonated beverage in a can, I'm incredibly bored AND hyper, so this only means one thing: THE NEWS! (For the first time in like, ever since I've done this...)

Well, thanks to dial-up, I haven't been able to watch the video, but this looks like the most amazing idea in cleaning ever. He's apparently now developing a whole system to be able to play a real-life version of Pac-Man, which I demand be in my house... I may try to do the same, only with ghetto remote control cars.

A guy was arrested for driving a cooler, legally considered a motor vehicle. Oh, but he was drunk at the time so it's officially a DUI, even though he was on the sidewalk and doing like, 10 mph. I almost converted my tuba case into a little motorized cart, back when it was about 2/3 my size...

Well, despite the overall cheesiness of the article, It's a good segue from coolers to beer. A Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee is basically supplying the daily meal of a real man (redneck or not) for free to each of their guests in honor of some country music festival. They have some skewed perception of 'redneck' though, because pretty much every bachelor lives off of those same items, and I know most rednecks wouldn't drink beer with an actual label on it.

Speaking of travel, in case you haven't heard, because of the ass-rapingly (great adjective/adverb) high gas prices, Airplane companies will begin charging you for every little thing, including their required bag checks, and probably even charge extra for the air in the cabins. Up to three times the original ticket prices. My only hope now is they perfect the atomic transporter soon, so we won't have to use any more gas. (and yes, all our power will come from magic. What else?)

I'm glaaad to be an American. Not proud; just glad.

This has been a fairly publicized incident, but in case you didn't hear, a couple of guys easily broke into a art museum using a phone. They called security, told them that the security company was having issues with the system, and told them to ignore any alarms that night. All they had to do then was sneak past the ONE guard inside the museum as he went for a smoke, and steal $2 million in gold sculptures and necklaces. The few working cameras couldn't catch anything because all the lights were off in order to save electricity costs. This reminds me of how easy it is for two kids to sneak into a Plutonium manufacturing plant in the Manhattan Project, a cool movie about... well, pretty much about that. Aah, the 80's, so insecure, yet awesomely horrible. (As soon as I finished typing that, "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" came on!:])

Going back to the food topic for a moment, A small drink manufacturer has plans to begin shipping out 'Drank', an anti-energy drink. This basically puts you to sleep, and goes well with vodka, like they needed to be combined into some liquid sleep-ray. I hope that this means, at some point in the near future, we can control all aspects of our life through the oral cavity. Everything from waking up, to learning math and science, to growing, to dying, all can be substituted by a medicine-y tasting soft drink with a CRAAZY label and/or mascot and/or ad campaign. Especially Comatose Cola. Death Drink? Age beverage? Learning Liquid...

And finally, an event that I'm sure had just put everyone in a state of turmoil and distress, and you just cannot function anymore knowing that this has happened.

Oh; and I guess I should give you a link to my father's blog on the construction, even if none of you have seen the original house, you can at least obnoxiously spam the comments. It's really worth a look, though, so you see what I'm living through right now. And if you can see the window on the existing house right where the construction is? THAT's where I've been sleeping for the past few weeks, and THAT's where the Mexicans come to work at 6:30.