Blogosphere Icarus

Talk about a disaster this day has been... at least as far as this blog is concerned. In the beginning I couldn't decide on what to do. I used to have a few spare ideas for cases like this, when the mind goes blank. I know I haven't done everything yet but still, at times you can't think of something new. Even so, none of the spare ideas felt fitting for today. They were either not very appealing or impractical to implement.

Anyhow, after a lot of thinking (and after rejecting the idea of composing a definite list of spare ideas for novelties for today's novelty) I decided that I there was nothing better to try today than to fly upwards, towards the blogosphere. As you may be able to tell, this blog isn't very connected with other blogs. In fact, none of the blogs I have or participate in link to any other blog or are heavily commented by people from other blogs. That was not the point, however. The point was not to connect with the rest of the blog community; it was merely to get to know it.

A terrible mistake, if you ask me. Tempting as it is, I'm not referring to the terrible quality of most of the blogs. I'm referring to the fact that after one hour of reading and searching I accomplished next to nothing. I still have no clue about the feel of the general blog community. In fact, I subscribed to a few new blogs, but nothing interesting enough that I can talk about it here.

I tried very hard to find blogs that interested me, about my hobbies and the way I reason. There was nothing coming even close to that. Google Reader's recommendations wasted much time. I even looked at some of the bundles it has to no avail. I have come to question myself, after all this: Are my interests not concrete enough so I can find something I can relate to? Perhaps they are but a shadow in my mind and not real at all? Maybe my personality is so rare in humanity that I can't relate to the thoughts of other people? Or is it just the vastness of the blogosphere that prevented me of finding something really interesting so fast? I guess I'll never know.



Edit: It's amazing how one thing leads to a completely different thing, sometimes. After continuing doing whatever it was I was doing for this novelty, I ended up using the share feature of Google Reader extensively. The result? It's a little something I named my meta-blog. Enjoy!

Siesta

I sometimes wonder why I keep starting these blog entries with incidents from my childhood. Perhaps it was when I was young that anything actually interesting happened to me? Yes, that's probably it. Anyway, as a child, I hated naps. My mind couldn't grasp the purpose of sleeping during the day. I had a hard time adjusting to kindergarten standards of the siesta after lunch. That's probably the only time in my life I regularly slept at any time except in the night. According to Wikipedia, my repulsion to this thing was justified and I was supposed to acquire the need for siestas during adolescence. Only I never did. I keep hating sleeping in the day as much as always. I've always rationalised it: I thought that it was a waste of time, which is ironic. I am an individual who really values his time in theory but wastes immeasurable amounts of it in practice, something I am really ashamed of.

So, for today, I tried to do something simple: Sleep for one hour. It was hell. As soon as I lay down to rest, I started thinking what I would write for this blog. Isn't it strange? I'm supposed to report my experience but that was just thinking about the report. I kept thinking about these things. Then, it occurred to me that I do this for all things. I keep thinking and planning about things of the future. This is not a bad thing in itself but shouldn't there be limits? I find myself thinking of things that require no planning. Yet, I keep thinking about these again and again. Then a sudden realisation came to me: Planning something and thinking about it drains your motivation to do it. So, if you plan too much, when the time comes to act you may find all your motivation depleted. I decided that was one great mistake I've been doing and that I shouldn't think so much of my future activities, especially when there's nothing to plan about them and know in advance.

So, I just slept.

As if. This would be the fairy-tale ending to my coming to conclusions about my life and my mistakes. It's funny how books and movies and all that condition people to believe once they reach a great conclusion about the meaning of life or something, then that immediately puts them in a position to act upon it and become better. Well, it's certainly not true for me. Accepting my mistakes and reaching abstract conclusions is the first and shortest part of a journey that only ends when you make habits out of them. And that's truly something.

I will be changing the schedule of this blog to release new content once per week, every Saturday. I'm hoping to return to the regular every-day schedule as soon as October comes.

The Disc Jockey of Doom!

Many years ago, when my brother and I were little, our mother used to sing us to sleep. I think these lullabies were a really interesting experience and I am thankful to her for that. Later, she started to sing less and put cassettes for us to listen to more and more; cue the necessary evils of technology and all that.

Anyway, today I decided to put my media player on random and listen to songs without ever skipping them. To my surprise, it turned out pretty well. I used last.fm to keep track of what I listened to and also searched for the lyrics for some of them. I put on my headphones, sat on my comfortable chair, then changed its direction to look towards the balcony and to allow the wind to gently caress me. The view wasn't exactly breathtaking but at least I didn't have to move the computer elsewhere. It didn't matter, after all, I kept my eyes closed most of the time, anyway. After waiting approximately one minute for all the files to be loaded, the songs started to play:

• Dust and Echoes (God Is an Astronaut)
  This is a post-rock band I discovered fairly recently. They're nice. They also forced me to re-evaluate my opinion on how songs should be listened to. I used to think that if you ever do anything else while listening to a song, you're missing something. That holds true for many songs, especially ones that have lyrics, but doesn't mean this is the only legitimate way to experience songs. On the contrary, sometimes it's better to miss that aspect and add your own activity to the experience. For songs like this one, this makes for a very different and important experience, which may even be better than just listening to it without doing anything else.
• Wishing Well (Black Sabbath)
  Once in a while, you get a song you like. But then it's ruined by just one miserable stereotypical, clichéd lyric:

  Love isn't money, it's not something you buy

  While it's not very bad, it still ruined my perception of the song. Couldn't they have done something a tad more subtle? I realise this was in 1980 but still.
• Μαργαρίτα Μαγιοπούλα (Μίκης Θεοδωράκης)
  This is a song from one of the classical modern-era Greek composers. It's a very earthly song, which he wrote for his daughter. I really like it mostly because I hate most of modern-era Greek music and this stands as an exception.
• Battle of Sudden Flame (Blind Guardian)
• Οι Παλιές Αγάπες Πάνε στον Παράδεισο (Πυξ Λαξ)
  This is from a really famous Greek band. I personally think they are vastly over-hyped. I often get the impression their lyrics don't make any sense at all. Still, this is one of their better songs...
• Eva's Reminiscence (Norihiko Hibino)
  I have many songs in my library; perhaps they are too many. I haven't listened to all of them by any stretch of the imagination. This is why, once in a while, I come across little hidden gems, like this one, which I haven't listened to before. It's instrumental and minimalistic and ambient. What more can you want?
• Theatre of Pain (Blind Guardian)
• Kandatsu (Michiru Oshima)
  Soundtracks, particularly ones coming from animé, are a large part of my musical diet. I hold a special place in my heart for the Full Metal Alchemist one.
• Surrounded by Flames (Koji Kondo)
  Speaking of soundtracks, I have found that sometimes they happen to feel good in-context, but when you listen to them on their own, they're almost unbearable. This is one such song.
• Ming's Theme (In the Court of Ming the Merciless) (Queen)
  Sometimes bands experiment. Sometimes, when this happens, the results can be like this:
  

  Pathetic earthlings, hurling your bodies out into the void. Let us see.

• Premonition of a Snow Storm (Toshio Masuda)
• Puropera Jitensha (Joe Hisaishi)
• Fingers (Yoko Kanno)
  This one was lovely. It's a pity I can't find the words to express what I felt. Or maybe it's an elaborate way to turn this into an open invitation for everyone to try this one.
• Puppetmaster (Yoko Kanno)
• Jikai Yokoku (Misato) (Shiro Sagisu)
• The Glow (Mark Morgan)
  I have a big confession to make: I haven't played the Fallout games yet. It's on my long list of things to do in my life. My brother seemed to love them and since our tastes in videogames are similar, I probably will, as well. I guess the soundtrack should suffice for the time being.
• Back to Madness (Stratovarius)
  I liked this one's lyrics. They ask questions we all come to ask ourselves. Questions we reply "yes" to too often.
  

  Have you ever been hurt?
  Have you ever been abandoned?
  Have you ever been truly scared?
  Have you ever felt you don't belong here?
  Have you ever felt you don't have a home?
  Have you ever felt you don't have a chance?

  
  I don't really agree with the definition of freedom the lyrics seem to imply but I do think they do a good job of showing how close to madness every person is.

That's it for today. Now I wonder if the tracks were representative of my musical taste or not. I guess they were... kinda.

PS: The "lullaby" picture was taken from davidcarmacklewis.com.