Author's Foreword: I wrote this entry yesterday, Sunday, at approximately three or four 'o clock in the morning. In the end I speculated the defrag of my hard drives was done--That wasn't true, yet, as my third one took longer than I suspected being I had added a lot of data in the course of the week between defragmentations. The second half of this entry falls victim to a wandering, aimless journal-type feel, but the first half compensates for that, hence, no Disclaimer. I only posted this Foreword for record-keeping purposes, so, on with the entry...

Well, in the fashion of all those horrible speeches given by people lacking in originality, I believe I shall commence this entry with a funny story laced with a joke, complete with a punchline and everything. I, personally, alwyas chuckle or smile when I think of this, and I am only reminded of this instance in my past because of what's currently spinning in my discman.
One might say I don't travel much, others of the more crude variety might say I don't travel worth shit. The latter expression is probably nearest the truth, I've been out of state all of, at most, five times, and nowhere that far from the eastern seaboard. Anyway, I was on my first (and only) flight, and it was a two-part trip from my home town to Philadelphia, then from there to Indianapolis. About one hour to Philadelphia, two and a half, maybe three, to Indianapolis. Alright, enough auxiliary exposition, onto the point. My favourite mode of killing time is music, I listen to it all the time, everywhere. So, I brought along a choice selection of CDs I had, and this was when I was about fifteen, sixteen, so I didn't have a very impressive collection and it was pretty run-of-the-mill. Anyway, that's beside the point which I've deviated away from, again. I was listening to music on the trip, and after they signalled for all electrical devices to be shut down, my dad, whom I was travelling with, turned to me and idly asked me what I was listening.
Not really being completely attentive, I thought for a split-second and replied with the name of the band.
"Gravity Kills."
Pausing momentarily, my dad looked at me and quipped, "Not very appropriate for on an airplane, don't you think?"
Blinking, I realised the irony of it and we had a good laugh, and I still get a decent laugh out of thinking about it. Anyway, I thought of that because I am, indeed, listening to Gravity Kills in my CD player. One of my habits as a night owl is that, occasionally, I collect my discman and a good album to listen to and head out to the backyard to sit and ponder with the ambiance of tunes. Mind you, we, as in my family and I, live on about an acre of land, where the house isn't that sizable and may take up one-quarter of the property, at most. We have an expansive backyard considering the fact this is an urban area, and I've always appreciated this little piece of suburbia situated in the middle of a somewhat-industrial locale. So, I sit outside with my headphones, on a bench in the very back of the yard, nonchalantly mulling over matters and the such.
The hard drives on my desktop are currently being defragmented, so I am left to bide my time outside the convenience of virtual desktop-land. Not really a problem, I have plenty of activities that I occupy myself with on a semi-regular basis that don't involve any Von Nuemann [sic] architecture. However, instead of drawing or reading as I usually would, I came out to the backyard, then decided to heft my laptop out here so I could write something to post up in my Blogspot. Ah, faithful laptop: cheap, refurbished Dell with missing latch. An overblown wordprocessor most of the time, it has served me as a source of music on numerous occasions, and I have it kept up-to-date enough with codecs and drivers to watch anime on it, albeit the CD-Rom drive is so slow I have to move everything I want to watch from the CD to HD for satisfying playback speed.
I've spent too much time already meandering on about menial matters (go, go, alliterative me), so onto what I really felt inspired to write.

Insert A Title With Pretentious Vocabulary Excerpted Randomly From the Nearest Lexicon Here

As I gaze up into the clouded, blue, night sky, I am reminded of my humbleness, of my humility as a human being. Absorbed into the superficial world of instantaneous gratification and sensory satiation half the time, it is very easy to slip into a superiority complex–Humanity, after all, does reign over the Earth rather engulfingly and undeniably. It is one of the reasons I ponder here under a tree: a reminder of our origins, of our connection to nature and to the greater, higher world.
Watching as the Moon is steadily enveloped by the cumulus blanket that is wrapped around the ceiling of the world, I feel much smaller in the scheme of things. It is a notification of my insignificance, in a way. When I am gone, when my people and my culture are gone, the Moon will still remains–the tide shall continue to rise and fall, the wind will not cease rustling the trees and dragging leaves across the ground. The human race is a temporary installment in the chapters of the tome of time, it can not be forgotten nor disproven. As all entities are born, they die; with life, comes death.
With our scientific and technological conquests, society moves higher and higher up the metaphorical horse, mounting the Earth and whipping it into submissive dominance. Many people erase it from their memories where we originated from, what the basis by which we have built our civilisation upon. Below the death, war, and sacrifice, underneath the layers of greed, betrayal, conniving, and back-stabbing, and lower than the rubble of human and animal skeletons lies the root of our world–Nature and all of its replenishing cycles. The photosynthesis of plants that replaces our respiratory system's by-product, carbon dioxide, with breathable, fresh oxygen to fuel our lungs and allocate it the power to produce more carbon dioxide. The scrapping scythe of Autumn that drains away the hot blood of Summer, which makes way for the blizzard of Winter's chill cleansing, where Spring nourishes and sprouts forth new life that is scorched away by the inferno of Summer. From the very smallest scale to the most gargantuan scale, the persistence of our existence is caused by and supported by Nature. It is also an exemplification of the omnipresence of life and death in our fragile world.
Beyond the branches of the tree I am canopied by, and across the neighbour's yard, over the city limits and sewage ditch, there's the pitiful remnants of what was once a successful and bustling mall. Newmarket Fair, or, in the past, Newmarker North. Now it is mostly empty–Sears still remains, the shipyard has some offices in there, Verizon runs its information, 411 service from within its walls. As a child, I walked over to the mall with friends to waste away coins in the arcade, or my mom drove me over to pick up the latest Garfield collection from Waldenbooks. Now? Now, I traipse to the doors of Newmarket Fair only to peddle myself to employers for the hopes of an entry-level, part-time job, or to see if any decent video games are on display in the electronics section of Sears to play for free, perhaps my friend is working there as a salesmen, as he has for two or three years now, and we can chat... Hardly one-half, not even one-fifth, the outlet it used to be for entertainment and social purposes. The lamps of the parking light burn brightly, quite visible and glaring from my stance, helping millions of other lights to blot out the stars; however, with the cloud coverage, this is moot, anyway. One may be able to stare upward and experience the feeling that what he or she sees then, somebody else saw hundreds of years ago.
In a way, I think out of all seven virtues, Humility is the most dead, perhaps rivalled by Charity. There are those among this race who are so arrogant that they deny their heritage, that they defy what has stood erect for thousands of years, only out of spite and contempt. I may be a far cry from what one may consider a traditionalist, but I am, by no means, among the ranks of slobs who clamour to eliminate all instances of the past and tradition that still stand. Science has given us a comfort that replaces the spiritual solace almost everybody experience, detached even from organised religion or religious symbolism. It may be exaggerated romanticism, but I'm sure that in the past, human beings stopped and felt a unity with the world that people do not feel anymore. Televisions, cars, radios, computers, and appliances have been invented to replace the older, less efficient devices which served the same purposes; but, with the fading away of the past ways, also faded away was the past mentality. Undeserved and unearned comfort dwells in the stomachs of the children of this world, why? Because we can say we took over the world, we seized it almost in its totality from nature and have made it ours', have formed it in our image. Is humanity heading towards a God complex? I can't say, that'd be the words of an alarmist or extremist, but, while a "God complex" may be too extreme or overblown, certain symptoms are present in today's world of this syndrome.
If we keep our eyes to the ground and our heads down, the sky will go unobserved, and there will be no stirrings within the human soul of what may be missing or devoid. When I squint past the streetlights and into the sky, I feel humble, I feel slightly insignificant, but I, also, feel as though a part of everyday life has gone missing from today's society. I see trees being cut down because nobody wants to rake the yard, I see suburban neighbours uniform and bland, each house nearly touching the next, each yard tiny and, while maybe having a flower garden, without trees. I look at metropolises like New York, Chicago, and Los Angelos, and I dread that these havens to black, towering obelisks of steel and concrete are where humanity is heading, are even what is considered progress. It may be a bit obvious, but I suppose I should mention I am a bit of a transcendentalist, especially in my beliefs regarding the government and the environment. When I picture the ideal home, I am not thinking of a cramped apartment with cracked drywall and smeared windows, overlooking streets utterly jammed with smoke-spewing vehicles and a sea of people elbowing and shouldering there way past each other. My idyllic homestead is departed from any urban society, it is within a forest with, perhaps, a stream running through the property. I am not calling for a return to Nature, by no means, but I do not wish to depart from it, completely. I do not wish to give up some modern conveniences–the computer is my livelihood, and I love some products of the television. Radio is, in my opinion, a bit of an outdated technology, but I don't see it fading away anytime soon. Instead of what has been going on since the Industrial age of America, where cities grow more and more expansive, mass, public transportation becoming more and more vital, I would prefer to see the opposite effect taking places: cities growing smaller, more nuclear, with less excess and pavement. Rural villages of six-hundred is not my dream, either; it is difficult to describe how I picture a better world, those who claim to be able to speak exactly every aspect of the world and how they should be are full of themselves. I seek nothing more than my own niche in life, my own little hole to crawl into and be content; quite frankly, the rest of the world is not my business nor big concern.
Until the day I can afford to remove myself from modern society, I think I'll just be happy with sitting under a tree in my nice backyard, listening to music on my Sony discman and petting a cat.

Euphoria in Instrumentation

While I am on the matter of feeling something beyond and greater than just myself, I suppose I should bring up my most memorable concert experience. Back in... Wow, I can't remember the date, I believe it was April 21st or somewhere near there... I was planning on going to the University of Richmond to attend a free, Fugazi concert. Of course, I had already asked my one friend who listens to similar music to me, for a good portion of examples, and he said he would go and give me a ride, but I knew his habits and I predicted he'd cop out at the last minute and leave me hanging with no way to get there. Luckily, I was eating lunch with some friends and another friend walked up, who had been eating with another group of people he knew but I didn't. Well, he mentioned that a guy he was talking to said he was going to the Fugazi concert of that coming Friday, the one and the same as the one I was hoping to attend. Instantly interested in introducing myself, I bounded over to the table they were eating at and introduced myself to the guy. He said a friend of his was driving there, and they wouldn't mind a third. At the time, my first friend who promised me a ride hadn't, yet, bailed, so I ensured that a fourth wouldn't be too much of a burden. In accordance with my predictions, though, he bailed on me at the last minute, on the day of the concert–I was very elated to have a back up plan, this time. (I'm not going to go into what happened later, regarding a different Fugazi concert.) So, anyway, skip to the day of the concert. The ride up is pleasant, the two guys who let me come with them converse among themselves a bit about inside matters, and I'm just riding along quiet and happy to be there in the backseat. Eventually, we broke the ice and I had a lot in common with the driver along the lines of music, so all of the ackwardness of not knowing someone you're with dissipated.
Fast forward a bit more, we drive through Richmond and get lost, get directions from some seedy-looking sub restaurant, and get there late. We're walking up to this outdoor, Greek-style amphitheatre, and I hear the sounds of "Ex-Spectator" floating my way. Instantly, I start to smile and we carve our way into the crowd, eventually securing a position up front and to the right of the stage. God, I can't describe how much I loved being there. They played every song I wanted to hear, except for "Dear Justice Letter," but that was hardly on my mind. Storming through "Break," "Blueprints," "Exeunt," and all of the content of The Argument and End Hits, practically, even playing "Furniture" and "Song #3," off their newest cut, Furniture EP. Suffice it to say that there was not a song I didn't know, and I was having the time of my fucking life in the crowd, screaming along and grooving. Lord, there isn't a time I hear a Fugazi song and don't envision myself back at that concert. The pure energy of the band, of the music, it coursed through my veins and breathed life into me–I felt alive, I felt sensations I had never experienced before, I felt a newfound connection with their music that has yet to leave me. This is the kind of joy and happiness that verges on being parallel with sex, I'd imagine. In my black trenchcoat and maroon fedora, I had a stupid smile plastered on my face the entire time and for a long time afterward. I was glad I was wearing my coat, too, complete with the lining, because it was in the thirties that night. Hehe, the band was joking about the weather the entire time, Ian MacCaye branded it to the coldest Fugazi concert ever, and Guy Picciotto said he wished he could play his guitar with his hands in his pocket. Oh yeah, I didn't know Joe Lally played the Chapman Stick, either–Sweet, sweet. Man, the concert was just... Fucking great, to put it crudely.
God, after the concert, the three of us all went up to the stage and lingered around, the driver and I both acting like awestruck fanboys and being too shy to ask for autographs. Finally, we walked over to the merchandise table and asked for fliers to have them sign; there were two left, so I just pulled out the first piece of paper I had from my wallet. Guy and Brandon The-only-member-whose-last-name-escapes-me signed a receipt I had from Walmart, I believe. Eh, I think that merits schoolgirlesque squeeling on my behalf. Yes, yes it does. Eeeeeeeeee. I'm pathetic, at times.
I'm not even bothering to assign a Failure Rating to that concert, because just implying the correlation between any form of failure and Fugazi is an insult, I think, especially after the time I had at that concert. I'd do it again, and again, and again, and again. I was going to do it, again, too, the beginning of July, but... Yeah, plans didn't work out. I still get a tinge pissed thinking about the fact I missed Fugazi for no good damn reason.

EOF

Well, this has been an extremely lengthy entry, and I think my defragmentation may be done, by now, so I'm going to head back into the house and check. If it's not done, I have English work to do, anyway.

Adios.

Currently Playing Song: Gravity Kills - Broken
Quote of the Moment: "Heh, let's just put 35 degrees here to remind you of the temperature of the coldest concert, ever." - Guy Picciotto, from the band Fugazi, while signing my receipt after the concert.