Poetry Monday |9| Imagine the Sheer Amount of Acid

Gliding High Below Me
My soul is separate; it leads the way. Transcend the bullshit.

Where mere mortals crawl, I've come to fly.
How these silvery sheets of foam chill my skin,
Yet I cannot find a way to purify.
Why can't I forget where I've been?

Onward I glide, holding pace with time;
Nearing a boundary that should ne'er be crossed.
To the edge where the dead men lie,
Yearning to find those Li(v)es that were lost.

Outside of the presence of all Mankind,
Underneath the realm of all we can find.

Almost Forgot This One

A quick and blunt recapitulation for all of you. I was going to bed and I remembered to post on my blag so this is going to suck, but I think it's pretty true in general. Maybe I'm out of touch...

I'm probably out of touch...

Republicans: Lower taxes, especially for the upper classes; have total faith that them having more wealth will ultimately result in everyone having more wealth (something that his been disproved time and time again). Cut spending, especially on social policies (unless it pertains to them or in any way educates people). No matter how unnecessary, the military budget is untouchable, unless you want to throw more money at it. Leave education to the state or family. Basically, they're faith-based idiots who are total jerks.

Democrats: Make taxes fair, lower taxes for the poor, raise them for the rich. Can't trust anyone wealthy (absolutely no faith in humanity). Spend, spend, spend, but in the "right" places. Talk a lot, become total pussies under pressure (basically wastes of time and taxpayer money). Educate the masses for a better future, simplify and empower the federal government for the good of the people. Tendencies to be obnoxious pricks. Infrastructure! Fuck corporations, save the worker (that'll keep em here) *sarcasm*.

Average Americans: Middle of the road, swings left to right with time and frustration with the other parties bullshit. Probably registered to a party, votes with that party most of the time, but flips if necessary. Wants education for children. Wants less government involvement. Hates corporations shitting on them. Hates paying social security and taxes but loves the outcomes. Basically, the other two parties take turns shitting on them.

Yeah... I'm out of touch.

What the Fuck Is This, I Don't Even

Happy Hump-Day-Wednesday everyone! To start today's mandatory blag post I would like to show you a YouTube video that my good friend Taylor sent me. He gave absolutely no warning or context. So all I have to say is:

"Taylor, what the fuck is this, I don't even..."

I'm almost positive that you will all feel the same.



Now that we got past that, I have big news. In case you didn't know last night was the, drumroll please, 2011 Presidential State of the Union Address.

Now, I personally think that the State of the Union is total bullshit, at least what it has become. It's kind of sad that it takes a national crisis or some stupid annual tradition for three key parts of our government to get together and outline each others goals.

Back in the old days, State of the Union addresses were much more common; in some instances it happened a few times in a single year. They were also given in the form of a letter most of the time, although there were of course speeches. Woodrow Wilson really made the custom of speaking annually and it's stuck.

Now State of the Union addresses are Constitutional obligations by the president. Article II, Section II of the United States Constitution says:

He [the president] shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.

In case you missed that or something, basically the Constitution says that our lame-ass President has to, from time to time, get in touch with our shitty-ass Congress and tell them what's up because apparently that's not somewhat inherent with their duties. I personally think the President should be talking to Congress as a whole at least twice a year. It shouldn't be this massive, stupid, event.

Also, what the hell is with the rebuttals? I looked them up and I'm ashamed to say that modern Democrats started this bullshit tradition. I fucking hate the party I align with.... This entire sick show is just a microcosm of the fucking bullshit that is U.S. Government. Why the fucknuggets are you giving a rebuttal to a statement you stupid shitheads!?!

I swear to God, our politicians these days are like children...

This is a fucking joke. America is a fucking joke. Thanks guys, you made my blag post digress into a public breakdown. I hate this stupid country, I hate the people who run it, I hate the people who are so dumb that they've fallen for this bullshit, and I hate the idea that it's only going to get worse.

...

We're all retarded and we're going to end up as the shit on the rest of the worlds shoes. I blame the baby boomers. ^-^ LOL

Cheers!

Poetry Monday |8| Begin the Code

Paradox of the Just
From the dust we came, to the dust shall we return.

Justice. Achieved only in isolation, which
Even the best of our laws cannot abide.

Not without God is Justice brought;
Nor has it or will it ever been done.

In divine isolation, it must be wrought.
For in sight of man, it's prone to greed.
Even those Laws are flawed with time;
Rendering Justice unreal, merely sought.

Armac's Shameless Plugging Special 2

Well, due to the overall unwrittenness of this part of TCCV, I'm going to be reviewing my own projects for the next few weeks, and will be posting the entirety of "The Betrayed" in a bit.

Sorry for the delays!

The schedule for the next few weeks is as follows:

-The Noodle Minions

-Project Mayhem/Numb Lock and Rumba

-Red Heart Bludgeon and The Dirty Hairs

-The Ziggurat Vertigods

This week, however, I'm just posting this new album of ambient soundscapes. Enjoy.

-Armac

The tracklisting as it appears on Bandcamp is as follows:

Dissolution of Grandeur - OBAFGKM

1- Nebula

PART I - Getting Cooler

2- Zeta Ophiuchi

3- Rigel

4- Altair

5- Procyon A

6- Sol

7- Epsilon Indi

8- Proxima Centauri I

9- Proxima Centauri II

10- Sirius

PART II - Peculiar

11- Achernar

12- Rosette

13- Pegasi

14- Chi Cygni

15- HD 101065

16- PG 1159

PART III - Keeping Track

17- H-R

18- Hertzsprung

19- Russell

20- Spectra

21- Size I

22- Size II

23- Majoris

It should be noted that the "I and II" songs are one song, but due to limitations in file size, they had to be split into more than one for Bandcamp. If anyone should download the album, know that.

This album was created using a plugin in Fruity Loops called "Beepmap"

This allows any image to be put in and turned into a sound.

Its hard to call this "my" music, because it seems I'm not doing very much.

On the contrary, I have to make the picture as interesting as possible, otherwise it is a boring piece of trash.

This album is made of pictures of stars, star charts, and paintings of stars.

The "Getting Cooler" portion was originally to be the full album, but I got greedy.

This album can be listened to over time, as background noise.

I may release an album like this every once in a while, especially if anyone likes it.

Chaos Theory Update

I've been doing this Chaos Theory experiment for two weeks now. If you don't totally recall or have no clue as to what I'm referring too, CLICK HERE.

I found that it works astoundingly well at school. When I'm sitting at lunch and I don't know what piece of work to do first, it is simply amazing. It takes most decision making out of the equation, and mandatory wildcards keep the fun and humor up.

It has also kept me busy. If I ever have a moment where I feel even somewhat bored, the cards usually help me remember two or three things that I need to do or want to do. They force me to think of multiple options while writing the choices down and it keeps me from forgetting things.

So far they (the cards) have not led me to do anything with noticeably negative results, but I'm obviously not complaining.

I have actually been considering raising the stakes a little bit with this chaos theory. Using them more often and for borderline crazy things. I'll probably decide whether or not to do this with a shuffle...

So far, I would recommend this to anyone. Start small and by shuffling only with simple tasks, then slowly move towards more comprehensive use. Jumping straight into it would make it hard to be consistent. Remember to have wildcards when shuffling chores, and chores when shuffling wildcards.

Finally, abide. Bad things happen if you don't... trust me I know. Have faith that the Universe will steer you right. ^-^

Cheers!

Maximum Occupancy

So I'm sitting here, eating my lunch in a portable structure which is serving as a temporary mess hall (because the college inexplicably decided to spend millions on demolishing and rebuilding a perfectly good cafeteria instead of using the money for, you know, actual education) when I look up and notice that the sign above the door that says "Maximum Occupancy" seems somewhat odd. I immediately know why. Apparently, the fire-marshal-decreed-safe limit of people in this particular building is 49.

Why 49?

If you know me, even a little bit, you probably know that I have A.M.O.C.D. A term I made up just now that means: Apparent Minor Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. For example, when it comes to volumes on TV's and radios, and such; I have this paranoid thing where the volume must be set to a number that either adds up to ten or is two of the same single digit numbers in a row. So 11, 19, 22, 28, 33, 37, 44, 46 and 55 are all PERFECT but everything else just drives me crazy. I don't know why.

Also, when I'm showering or brushing my teeth my scrubs have to be a factor of eight. When I walk along the sidewalk I try to make it so that I step on every block the same amount of times. Now that I say it out loud, maybe it's more than A.M.O.C.D...

Anyways...

That number 49 is driving me insane right now. I can't understand what kind of sick human would put 49 in stead of just rounding up to 50 like a normal person.

I bet they're hiding just out of view waiting for someone like me to snap and have a nervous breakdown in the middle of the lunchroom. That fucking sadist.

Seriously, what sort of fire marshal walks into a building and evaluates that only 49 people could safely be inside at one time. What sort of logic does he put behind choosing a number like 49. As if 50 would certainly just be far too much.

He must have been insane, deranged, psychotic...

This is driving me crazy.

Spring 2011: Semester II

My four week break is officially over. Today I head back to school and tackle 14 credit hours. Hurray for being a Full-Time+ student!

Let's see how Chaos Theory operates in a school environment...

Tomorrow, another post. Should be a good one.

Poetry Monday |7| My Blue

Caeruleas Mea
The one I chose, amongst many.

As the last light of day drained westward,
Westward with the masters of innovation,
I cast my unwavering sight duly North.
There and to the East, a jewel of time caught my eye.

A distant diamond in the infinite rough;
Vibrant with life of a celestial kind.

There, a million million miles, lightyears, or lifetimes
Distant; a glistening heart, gliding with grace.
Its pale glow so immense, beckoning me
Like the beacon it is, to a safer shore.

Its own shallow harbor, cast blue with its shine,
Must be a place of unimaginable wonder.

Its journey through the night, the eons, I follow.
For an infinite time it lives; apart, together,
Like night or far brighter than day.
As endless bridges of dust or orb of power.
My star is, always has, and always will be.

Christened by me on the tenth night,
My star is my guiding force. Caeruleas Mea.
A month since, I still follow her.
A month since, I still yearn to be cast, alone,
Onto her azure shores.

I yearn to follow that ever-glowing beacon,
The one that beckons me so.
So that I may be warm in her radiation;
So that I no longer feel so lost, adrift, in time.

Armac's Shameless Plugging 5 (Track 9)

A SHORT ANNOUNCEMENT
Hi! It's me, Howie.
I liked the reacousticized version of this song
so much that I've hijacked the post
and set it to publish three hours ahead of schedule.
Seriously... it rocks.

Hey all!

Hope the holidays were good, This marks the return of TCCV: Acoustic stuff.

Theres been quite a lapse in time since the last TCCV post, so to remind everyone:

-Post 1 (Tracks 1-4)

-Post 2 (Track 5)

-Post 3 (Track 6)

-Post 4 (Tracks 7-8)

These and the new track make up parts 1 and 2 of the TCCV story, The Inferno and The Hunters.

After Track 9, The Betrayal begins.

Stay tuned.

Welcome back, me!

-Armac

Track Nine - Thome

This song is similar to "The Legend Told" storywise. Nothing plottish happens, it just sorta tells a bit about what happens post-story. The song is about the country of Thome, which is where the entire TCCV story happens.

The original version was one of my favorite songs from the original TCCV. White noise at the beginning is tacky. The guitar is fine though. Singing is stronger than usual at this time, though inconstant volume and white noise detracts from it. I try to go too deep at the end of Verse 1. I like the chorus singing. The "Thome" yells aren't too bad. The next line makes no sense, storywise. My singing really isn't that bad yet. Cool. I like the differentiation with the choruses, I should have kept that. The "in Thome" whispering is cheesy as shit. I like verse 3 nonetheless. Aw man, I mess up the lyrics at the beginning chorus 3. I could actually go deeper then, than I can now, I think, lol. Screams at the end are dumb. Overall, not bad at all.

The new version is not changed too too much. The quality of the recording is improved, and a faux-bass track is added. Its slightly slower, and more acousticized. The second verse lines that didn't make sense story-wise were changed. The bass during chorus 2 is offish, but I like it. The 'you don't want to be here' part is changed, but I like it. And that stupid "in Thome" part is removed. I like the volume changes between verse and chorus. I like the louder Thome yells at the end. All in all, recording and performance quality is upped, a few small things altered, but I really liked the original, and didn't feel the need to change it as much.

How To: Cook White Rice Like A Boss

My mom was like, "You need to learn how to cook."

So I was like, "Okay."

My mom is full blood Puerto Rican from New York City so she knows how to cook like a beast. We're talking about the greatest tasting food, on the tightest budgets, in America. In case you don't know, the big NY is sciencedamned expensive.

The first thing she taught me how to cook was white rice, and it is BOMB.

I know some of you are going to start reading this and think, "white rice isn't that hard to cook, come on Howie, you know better than this."

Well fuck you, after you have a bowl of amazing white rice everything else seems like total shit.

Let's get started!

Let's talk about portions, it's all pretty simple and it's very easily up-sized to feed larger quantities of people.

1CUP of RICE will require:

• 2CUPS of WATER
  
• 2TABLESPOONS of OIL
• 1 TEASPOON of SALT (I like more though)

STEP ONE: Get your BIG ASS IRON POT and POUR in WATER, OIL, and SALT. Put burner on HIGH and bring to boil.

STEP TWO: Stir in RICE. Let BOIL until the WATER is NEARLY DRY.

STEP THREE: Reduce burner to LOW and cover POT.

STEP FOUR: FLIP the RICE after 10 MINUTES. [that's where you use a HUGE SPOON to TURN the RICE that was on the BOTTOM up to the SURFACE. COVER again.

STEP FIVE: WAIT another 5-10 MINUTES and your RICE will be DONE. Make sure that it doesn't dry out. That will ruin it.

STEP SIX: EAT that SCRUMPTIOUS SHIT.

If you don't like it, YOU DID IT WRONG GRINGO!

Try again... make it yours... make it awesome...

Cheers!

A couple of Sevens, low sun, blue sky, country roads...all is good.

7

A mid week video clip, to re-energise the Blat gland!

Press it!


From the 'New Year blat' : Thanks for the footage mate ;-).

__________77__________

Why There Is No Post Today

Yesterday I put "Write Blag" in the Chaos Theory cards for every shuffle. In fact my last shuffle comprised of three "Write Blag" cards and one "Sleep" card. I never got the blag card. So... maybe tomorrow?

Poetry Monday | 6 | I wrote this on one of those really good mornings.

Mornin' Baby

Jazz music and coffee is

Too sweet, too sweet
To be true, I love days like this.
Babe I can't wait till we kiss;
When our lips
Will meet, will meet
We'll set fire to the land
And leave this place hand in hand.

Steel and wood never
Looked so good

Except where we gather.
I would really rather,
Kiss by the river
I hope they understood
When we left the sand
And came to listen to this band.

It isn't ever blue,
Inside of me

When I'm holdin' you
I feel our love and it's true.
I wish I knew
When we, when we
Would be close again
And you'll walk right in.

Then I'll say,

Mornin' Baby.

F... f... f... frosty physics!

7

It looked nice out there, but the reality was something different for this Sunday mornings outing. It was showing + numbers for the air temperature and yet the frost layer would suggest otherwise, strange. The meet was on though, and with the Southern Kit Car Club making a traverse across two counties to sample the delights of Farnham station and then on to breakfast at Loomies, there was no way we couldn't be there...so survival clothes were donned and preparation for the challenge commenced.

Now, when I say frost layer, I mean a micron or two of invisible glass under the more obvious, but randomly placed, dusting of white, which you'd attempt to avoid. But this stuff was inconsistently laid down in a murderous minefield pattern of 'now you see me now you don't'. 

The fresh experience of  'drive with that roll of the dice, suckers!' caught out more than a few of the early learning Tin Top drivers.At least 5 of the players had scored low in the points before I'd even completed the 10 miles to the RV at 7.30am. It's not a good time of the day to be trying to extricate the broken bits of your Clio or Megane from the verge/hedge/fence that seemed to be the equivalent of the out of play area in this team event.

I haven't worked out why most participants on the losing side seemed to be female (just an observation!), I'm also not sure as to the meaning of the one armed semaphore flapping that goes with the post event debrief whilst on the mobile ;-?

Farnham station soon saw the arrival of the SKCC, some of them having been 'on the blat' since 6 am...(correction :5am!). Impressive considering the attrition rate already observed in my first 10 mile stretch.The report was that it was worse over our way, if that's not too disparaging just as we're planning to throw ourselves at it's mercy!

The deliberation time did allow for a moment or two of traction testing tho:

Time spent with a coffee at the station and a shuffle of i-Phones to download a 'find the local cafe' Ap revealed neither the location of a nearby sausage (wrong ap) nor a thawing in the Killer Ice Event Phenomenon. So the Blatference continued for a bit longer...standing around in cold car parks on a Sunday morning, I could feel the H1N1 virus molecules building a case against the defence.

     'Still a bit slippery isn't it?'

'Do you think the triple 8's will cope?'

'Have you found that Cafe Ap yet?'

'Are those CCTV cameras on?'

'Did you really come all that way without a hat?'

'Aahhtchoooo!'

The lure of breakfast had us back on the road and heading for the original breakfast stop, Loomies, a funereal pace being set as we searched for the main ingredient of car physics: traction.It allowed for time to take in the surroundings though:

• Cyclists on the dual carriageway, each in turn waiting for the other to pick his teeth out of the gutter whilst losing more core body heat through ever more holey spandex.
• Two Buzzards feeding on roadside matter, hardly flinching at the snail pace parade of idling 7's
• A sign offering Bulls for Sale.The boot sadly not big enough today.
• Chawton End: where Jane Austin lived and wrote some of her novels , wonder if she could hold a pen wearing gloves in these temperatures.
• A big old owl in a tree, more interested in thawing mice than slipping 7's.
• A Peugeot, frozen mid hurdle of a five bar gate, the driver:  sat pensive, perched alongside.
• A horse box on it's side, no horse kept inside.

Even in the sun the stuff persisted, the worst of it not visible at all.

But here's the thing, whilst all else on the road struggled to keep within the boundaries, the 7s remained predictable and collectable.Traction was minimal , further exacerbated by road/track tyres, but, breaking from sliding to static friction didn't unsettle the cars enough for the momentum not to be caught and controlled. At any time and at varying speed, the momentary loss of grip under acceleration or braking was instantly sensed and captured. Realisation that this balance and feedback was available at such a micro level in hugely unpredictable conditions, further emphasises the wide band capabilities of a car with the inherently right design qualities. No traction control, ALB, DSC etc to artificially broaden the car's dynamic user range, just proper physics designed-in from the start...unlike the 'improper' physics which the weather Gods had cooked up for the day!

Discussions over the well earned breakfast concurred on this, the main fear on the road being the barrelling metal coming in the other direction, of which we would have no control.

Empathy went out to the half dozen bikers who'd made it for breakfast, we were told that some of their number were to have a late breakfast at home, once the recovery truck had collected the big pieces from the pitch. No major injuries reported. Camaraderie of the shared challenge brought free discussion amongst the survivors of both camps. Like a winter mountain restaurant only accessible from a hazard strewn black run... and with another black run still being the only way down! Each new arrival spoke of their experience and incredulity at the unexpected conditions.I mean, you really wouldn't have ventured out on a sports bike if you were expecting those conditions surely??

So, with reference to the 'This can't be for real?' weather headline to the previous posting... no it wasn't, not in the way that most of the Sunrise collective on this particular morning were expecting!

However: we counted them out , and counted them all back in.... the slowest Blat in our history, but a success non the less.  

Cheers to Mark and the guys from the SKCC for giving us the incentive to get out there and test our resolve.Let's do it again when the roads are dry and the breakfasts are bigger ;-)         

  ________________77777777________________

Armac's Shameless Plugging Special: Everyman Remastered and Bandcamp Layout Update

Hey all, I'm sorry for disappearing these past few weeks.

I've been working on Everyman: Acoustic - A Shortcut To Freedom REMASTERED VERSION. For those who don't know, Everyman: Acoustic is a project that I worked on from 2008-2010. It follows the story of EM (short for Everyman) as he falls in love with Her (The name of the female character EM falls in love with), loses Her, and ends up killing himself.

Its not a cheery tale, thats for sure.

The album started off as a title: "Shortcut to Freedom" and an image:

This image is basically the catalyst for the album, because Howie and I happened across it a bit after we had come up with the title. After that a few songs were either put into the works for the album, or had already been written and were shoved into it. Those songs were With Me, Undefined Bliss, Unattainable, Taken Root, The Land of Women, FuckIDie and Straight Shot. These songs were all originally done by Numb Lock/Project Mayhem, who was Howie, Tom Osborn-Popp, Erickh Norman, and myself. I had also written riffs that would become songs on the album, and one entire song that never saw fruition with NL/PM. When the band disbanded due to the departure of Howie, "An Untimely End" was released and had versions of those songs. I still wanted to finish the Shortcut To Freedom project though, and I continued work on my own. I wrote a prose version of the story, and the set to work creating the full album. An early idea for the album had pieces of the prose and music on the same bill, but when that version was mostly finished, I rethought the idea and decided to make it only music. I expanded the original 13ish song version to a 20 song version and recorded videos of me performing it. I continued to expand the album and about 2 years after it began, Everyman: Acoustic was created. A 43-song concept album that features only me on acoustic guitar (and Howie on bass once, and a digital overture). If not for that album, I probably wouldn't have created my bandcamp account, because the original reason that I did was to distribute it. When I finally finished it, I was like "this is done". But then, a month or so ago, my brother showed me how to get rid of white noise on songs, and since I had kept the multi-tracks for all of Everyman: Acoustic, I decided to remaster it with this newfound ability. As I did so, I decided to include extras so people had an incentive to download it.

I finally transcribed all the lyrics, and made an official-looking lyrics insert.

I scanned some of the original lyrics pages in my lyrics-notebook.

I attached some text files of old outlines for the album.

I put some finishing touches on songs that I had always intended but never followed through on.

• On Running B, the line "beat by beat", now has bass-beats under it
• On Undefined Bliss (Reprise), during the vocal-less second verse, there is a cacophony of every other song on the album sped up.

The song One Word was accidentally made awesome when two completely separate vocal tracks were put on top of each other and it ended up being way cooler than the original.

I also included two extra songs: Freedom (Reprise) and Overture (Desolation Remix).

Freedom (Reprise) is a song that I had written the lyrics for a year or so ago, but I had decided it wasn't necessary to the album. I extended it a bit and finally recorded it for the Remaster.

Overture (desolation Remix) is a slightly different version of the Overture. *Shrugs*

And now to our second order of business!

The new bandcamp layout goes as follows

Continually updated stuff ----->

Everyman stuff ----->

Interlution stuff ----->

TCCV stuff ----->

Other stuff ---->

The continually updated stuff:

Covers - Songs not by me, probably the most frequently updated here.

Dirty Hairs - Improvised songs by me. Hasn't been updated yet, lol.

New Songs - Anything that doesn't fit anywhere else

Painfully Disobedient Degradent Melodies - The Ziggurat Vertigods new stuff.

Songfight Songs - Any songs I put on Songfight.

The Everyman stuff:

Acoustic Remastered -You just read about this.

Acoustic - Also this

Outtakes - All Everyman songs that didn't make it on anything else.

Youtube Sessions - The audio of the video-performance of the 20-song-version.

Rough Draft - The version with the prose interspersed.

The Interlution stuff:

I - The Journey - The first one I did a while ago. Pretty ok stuff.

II - Purity and Corruption - The second of these instrumental albums, each song appears twice.

III - Incoming Transmission - A four-part album, with one part "Goddamnation" by The Ziggurat Vertigods.

The Eradication Complete - An extension of two songs on The Journey.

The Ziggurat Vertigods "Painting Over The Darkness With Light" - The first album by TZV

The TCCV stuff:

Acoustic - The stuff this blog deals with usually.

TCCV - The first album I ever wrote, Parts I, II, III, and V of the TCCV epic.

WWIII -The second album I wrote about a fictitious war, then I made it part IV.

DNF - This is part VI. It has a bunch of faux-rap songs :P.

DNB - This is part VII. It has only one song with lyrics, I think. lol

The Other stuff:

Numb Lock "An Untimely End" - Mentioned above.

Project Mayhem "Rumba" - The best album ever.

Project Mayhem "Tits" - The companion to Rumba.

Red Heart Bludgeon "The Crucified Masses EP" - An album by a fictitious band.

The Noodle Minions "Old Shit Compilation" - My first recordings.

ALright, I hope everyone's holiday was good!

I'll be back posting TCCV-Acoustic stuff by next week hopefully!

-Armac

This can't be for real?!?!

7

Quick, run around , check oil, tyre pressures... find shoes, helmet , glove (only one so far), need fuel ...send messages and hope it's true!!

______0______

I'm Going to Chaos Theory! [wait what?]

Hey guys! Sorry for not posting on Wednesday, I was thinking about you though, I promise (just ask Armac).

Well it's Friday and I have another whole week of break until school restarts. I've been getting ready and I realized I need a way to make sure I get everything done. However, I also want to spread my metaphorical (and cliche) wings a bit this upcoming year. I have a lot planned...

Weight loss, kicking the shit out of school, deciding my own fate, meeting people, working, et cetera.

For once I actually want to follow through with all of my plans though. I want it to be fun too! Fortunately for me, a few stars aligned and I think they're guiding me to do something that just might be my ticket to success.

Of course you're either intrigued or skeptical of this, either way, you want to know how the "stars aligned," right? Well, Chaos Theory, starring Ryan Reynolds and Emily Mortimer, is one of my favorite movies of all time. I just find it awesome and funny for some reason; whatever. For Christmas the family got itself an awesome blu-ray player, which also has Netflix on it. Naturally, we became hooked to this "Netflix" almost immediately.

I searched for Chaos Theory and found, to my dismay, that it was a DVD only movie; this means I had to order it and it would come in the mail, as opposed to it streaming immediately. I was disappoint, but I ordered it and all was good.

Two days ago, my family calls me out and says, "hey don't you like this movie?"

Much to my surprise, the movie was added to the list of "Play Now" films, and I could watch it then and there. So, I did. If you haven't seen the movie, I urge you to stop reading and go watch it immediately, I don't care how. You can pick up here later.

SINCE I KNOW, FOR SURE, YOU'VE SEEN IT...

...I'll assume you know what Ryan Reynolds' character does with note cards, you know, after all the bad stuff happens to him. No doubt, it's an interesting concept. Maybe even worth trying, just not to those extremes. After all, we're not all super-depressed like him. Right?

Fast forward! The next day, I'm watching my daily dose of The Colbert Report. His guest happens to be a doctor who LOVES checklists and currently has a New York Times Bestseller entitled The Checklist Manifesto.

>_>

Coincidence! Whatever...

Then, I'm watching my daily double dose of politics with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow and the same fucking doctor is on talking about checklist shit again!

Fine universe... I get it... I'll bite....

So I looked it up for seriously (thats proper ingles) and checklists seem like an awesome way for me to keep my life in order. But it's just, not, me... and I certainly wouldn't be able to keep it up because of that. Then I remembered Chaos Theory.

B... I... N-G-O.

I tried it today, and I love it. Obviously, I'm not taking it to the extreme like in Chaos Theory, but I'm going to apply it on a smaller scale. For tasks that can be time swapped, I'll surely be utilizing my note cards to decide the order.

I've also made myself always include at least one "wild card". Basically something irrelevant but that I want to do, preferably something I haven't done before, or don't do often. For example, today I had to write a letter to a friend, and I did! It felt good somehow.

I urge you all to try this sometime, and I'll certainly keep you all updated on how it goes.

TL;DR?

For daily tasks and minor decisions,
I'm going to rely on note cards and chance from now on;
Like in the movie Chaos Theory.

Poetry Monday | 5 | This one's derp.

Music Vitae
There isn't a song we haven't yet sung.

How do we capture the moment when it's made of air

It slips through our fingers without resistance

I think we've lost a bit of ourselves, it seems we no longer care

It feels right when the sound of life is wrong

When the music in the room is that of your life

Forget, forget, forget.

Sometimes a song matches just right

The frequency is that of the universe around it

Sometimes it seems like we just don't give shit.

How do we know when the time is just right or wrong

To hit play or pause some other odd command

I think we've been without the music of life for too long.

If I could get it right, yes, I would dare

When the music in the room is that of your life

Forget, forget, forget it.

First Blat of the year...finding the magic.

.

There wasn't a lot of notice of the sunshine today, but it was kind enough to occur just inside the limit of personal tolerance for the endless grey, damp overcast of the past 7 days.Gollum like we emerged from our respective garages into the daylight....and dry roads.

Only '2 up' today, but virus's, SORN status, relatives and frankly an hour's notice isn't going to allow for a full house...despite the temptation! 

Impressions after having not driven a 7 for a while?

Well, it's not always the acceleration that you notice first off, that's almost to be expected in comparison to  the mass of a usual road car.

    

Initially it's the noise. There's a lot going on it would seem, I guess you don't get to sit that close to any sort of machinery in normal circumstances, and frankly, you're surrounded by it.The mechanical noise recedes pretty quickly though, wind noise takes over, blanketing the activity around you.


So, if acceleration and noise aren't the prevalent indicators that you're back in the 7, what is?
To me it's the braking that is truly noticeable.It catches you out at the first medium speed dab on the pedal. Even with cold pads and tyres, the middle pedal acts like a momentum kill switch and you'll be yards short of your turning in or stopping point. This happens more than a few times as your mind goes through a recalibration period. And, when the relevant surfaces have reached what's considered a normal operating temperature, the impressive nature of  light weight car dynamics are truly demonstrable under braking alone.

Bear in mind that this relates to a X-flow engined 7 with drums on the back, discs with admittedly decent pads up front, and very little in weight saving features. In comparison to other big disc multi pot 7s with carbon panels, that are pretty usual these days, I imagine the contrast to be even greater!

Directional change at medium and high speed are the next factors that seem to come effortlessly to these cars when you've been away for a while.
There is no lag between thinking it and having executed the input, no apparent lateral flex or lean, just a 'point and done'.Sometimes this is video game like in response, but the feedback from our road surfaces remind you that this is going on right now and there's no pause button on the apex of a real time turn in !

Here in lies the addictive nature of that lack of momentum, that sense of minimal mass, and, as the driver, it frees the car to do as you wish. It'll go exactly where you point it and as fast as you can think it, there's every reference from the car to indicate as to what's going on, but little sense of restriction from the machinery around you and the physics that normally binds you. It's that sense of weightlessness and freedom that can actually be captured and savoured for a  few minutes that has you going back for more of that 'magic'.

So, how come this isn't all just a one way route through the hedge?

The truth is that most of us haven't the skill to get anywhere near the limits of a 7 on the road.Track experience proves that these cars are barely stretching themselves on the roads of Britain...and, most of the rest of us, haven't the nerve to go to that corner of the performance envelope to even look at the limit! That's the safety factor, a margin of capability that the car rarely has to fulfil.

Most 7 drivers have a good perception of what driving is all about, they wouldn't have the car if they didn't, and a 7 has to be 'driven', demanding involvement. Most 7 drivers will apply all of their driving skills all of the time when behind the wheel, that's where the enjoyment is after all, but the car is actually many times more capable than the driver. Stay with me on this...A missed braking point is remedied with fractionally greater pressure on the pedal, or carry the braking into the turn, and then change down a gear if you have to...not recommended for real pace on track, but if the car's way inside it's performance range there's room for forgiveness and the lack of mass allows things to come back in line very quickly ... preferably before the fellow blatter spots your indiscretion as you flick to another tune on the i-Pod and miss the gear change or braking point!

This is why today we could still enjoy the discovery of a local road that gave us some hairpin switchbacks speed signed at 10mph ! That'll be like a sign to the sweet shop then ;-)

The barely treaded and hardly appropriate R888 rubber on cold roads, that we weren't familiar with, are factors that could begin an accident report...but the predictability and familiarity of the 7 have me only reporting a great drive out in winter sunshine and finding more of that magic!

Not bad for a car that is more than 50 years old... well, with a few mods along the way.


Anyhow, we came across a microlight fly in day, so we stopped for a bit.

They were having the aerial equivalent of a Blat I suppose, but they had a BBQ and men with radios and stuff. I liked the space frame chassis (OK, fuselage) in this one...I believe it was made of drinking straws:

Some of the air machine men in their awkward fitting and unhappily coloured romper suits spoke to us ... we think it was because we had helmets too. I mentioned wing loading to one of them, we nearly missed our lunch.

Lunchtime in these parts doesn't offer favourable traffic conditions for extended sprint opportunities, even on a Sunday,but it does offer a fair amount of 'sport'. Safe over taking manoeuvres were counted off by the dozen, to cries of  'pull' ,sometimes 4 of the 'clay pigeons' were dispatched in one shot ;-) 

And so to lunch at 'Loomies', where our two wheeled brethren stood on parade in the car park talking bike. Ian H and I went in to speak chips and eggs.

The Loomies Cafe 2011 wall calendar  is now available and doesn't just feature images of visiting bikeists, no, July (or perhaps August?) features a rather splendid line up of three particular 7's ...

 

Fireblade Ring blat: Oct 10

....a small but significant moment of satisfaction as the Sunrise Sevens make a 'wee on the tyre' mark at this famous biker stop!

Check out the arch clearance, slam that ride!

(...or is it just the live axle with one wheel in a hole?)

_______________77________________

Stop everything!!

.
Put the hoover away, cancel the trip to the dump, postpone the inevitable visit from relations... crack open the garage door and BLAT!!!



A rare and special appearance by the sun from behind broken cloud and the day accelerates rapidly into a set of
different priorities.

See ya ;-)

____________7____________