Your Opinion Is Wrong™

I really should be working...but, well, you know...

Christop's recently been involved with the G20 protests and has been blogging about it. A paragraph that stood out in particular to me:

We had a lot of people tell us to get jobs. Was talking to Ben about how it seemed as though people presumed that because you do something you strongly believe needs to be done, people presume that you're only doing it because you don't have a paid job, and therefore just don't have anything better to occupy your time. Also found it interesting that people think it's fine to abuse people that they believe to be unemployed.

The phrase 'Get a job!' seems to be overused to the point where people don't even think before they say it any more. I think Christop may have been giving those people too much credit by suggesting that they put much thought into what they were saying. I think that it is the typical response by people who don't want to think about why the protesters were doing what they were doing. Most people don't seem to want to think outside their own little circles, and when they are confronted by people who clearly do, they feel the need to dismiss them with a knee-jerk reaction of some sort.

It could also be because they feel powerless or oppressed, or because our society seems to promote the 'Somebody Else Will Take Care Of It' mentality.

(Lucas, keep yelling it out to a random selection of people from my car window. That's a different situation. After all, we both know those people probably have jobs. The point is, they get confused, and we get cheap laughs.)

After a year and three and a half months together, Sarah broke up with me.

This was unexpected. She made the decision without me being and there wasn't much I could do about it once she told me. I won't go into the reasons why she made this decision here. The more we talked about how she came to this decision, I became less clear as to what her reasons actually were.

Talking's over now, anyway. Her mind's made up, so that's the end of that. I think she still wants to be friends. I think I want that too, although I don't think I'll be seeing her anytime soon.

One situation begets another: I am now without a guitarist.

Lucas summed it up perfectly:

"I can just see the ad in Drum Media now: 'Guitarist needed for Undead Rhythm Section. Must have own guitar. Sense of humour irrelevant'"

(Although it is likely that I will have a decent guitar setup of my own by the time a guitarist comes along...)


I've started recording our songs as well. Getting around Cubase can be best described as amusing but as quirky as its interface is, it appears that it's capable of everything I need it for. I shall have a cover of 'The Hardest Button To Button' done soon. If you wanna hear it, you should drop me a line and I'll send it to you, as I'm not really into the myspace thing.

Work is certainly an interesting place. I've somehow been hooked on DOTA, which we typically play every lunch break.

This is interesting because:

a) at a glance, DOTA is basically WarCraft III, but with minimal resource management, no controllable armies, and one hero per player and

b) I had thought I'd gotten over the WarCraft III thing ages ago.

Now, as each player is basically limited to one hero each, you'd think there'd be very little strategy involved. Well, a little bit of Yes and a lot more of no...

As each player is focussing on one unit for the duration of each game, the micromanagement that would normally be dispersed across an entire army is instead concentrated onto one unit. This means that combat in DOTA involves a lot of one thing:

Running Away.

Unfortunately, while I'm certainly good at the micro thing (I'm one of the only players here that's played many RTS games, let alone WarCraft), I'm not too good at the Running Away thing.

Still trying to get these people to play at least one game of WarCraft III though. Heh, heh.

So here I am, at work and listening to 'Gravity Won't Get You High', The Grates' first full-length release, and rather liking it. See, Lucas had suggested we cover one of their songs, 'Nothing Sir' (which is coming along nicely...I still have some ideas for some crazy Ted-Style rhythm changes, which should mess it up sufficiently), and upon realising I liked the song, lent me the whole album.

Apparently these guys are getting many comparisons to The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Never heard much of their stuff, so I shouldn't comment. I will comment, though, because this is Your Opinion Is Wrong™, not Your Opinion Is Probably Right, But I Wouldn't Know, Because I Haven't Looked Into The Subject In Enough Detail To Interject Your Claim™.

The Grates sound more like The White Strips with some of the lyrical qualities of The Dresden Dolls.

edit: ...and now I'm listening to 'Out Of Exile', Audioslave's newest (?) album, which my sis got for me as an early christmas present. I think.

Being a fan of Soundgarden and having been rather into Rage Against The Machine many moons ago, you'd think I'd like Audioslave, but their first release kinda didn't do it for me. It wasn't bad, it just didn't seem to have any of the good qualities of either Soundgarden or RATM.

This one seems OK, though. Second time I've listened through it.

You'd think I'd be relieved that Chris Cornell decided to cut his hair and wear a goddamned shirt once in a while, but since he has done both of those things, he doesn't seem able to sing quite like he used to. Coincidence?

Nay! Drugs!

Instrumentation is generally all good. Nice bass-heavy nearly-radio-friendly alternative rock with occasionally-weird guitar playing over the top, which is what detracts from the radio-friendliness.

An interesting note: I seemed to know exactly how quite a few riffs would end before actually hearing them, which hasn't happened since I listened to...uh, Jet, I think. Hmm. While Morello does still pull off some strange stuff, his playing in Audioslave seems to be a little more conventional-sounding than his earlier playing.

I get the feeling how he used to play had very little to do with drug abuse, though.

Y'all need to go here. 'Tis hilarious and...rather cool.

If you can, have a decent pair of speakers switched on, preferably with much bass.