How stuff happens

Ever notice how stuff can happen, just spontaneously, and whether you meant it or not, it can change the course of your afternoon, or your week, or possibly your life? That's what happened to me last night and today.

You see, I was playing around with Harrison (my uke) last night, when Becky came into my room and asked what I was doing. So I showed her what I was playing. Just random chords and stuff. Then I began playing We Like the Moon and then I realized it had a real catchy chord progression. So I decided to improvise lyrics to a totally different tune (as though We Like the Moon even HAS a tune). So I did this for a while, and Becky was watching me with rapt attention (at least, I THINK it was rapt attention). And when it was done, I realized I had a nifty song there. So the next day I recorded it. I guess that's how you break songwriter's block. Just improvise random stuff to a random tune and that ought to work.

And yesterday, I announced to Mum that I was bored. So she spontaneously just said, "You want to go to the museum?" Becky and I said sure, so that settled it. We off and went to the museum. Which was fun.

And then there's my Wall of Songs. It's something in the back of my journal. You see, I was bored and loitering in my room yesterday so I looked at the back inner cover of my journal. My journals are just composition books that I get at the store and put cool pictures on the covers of. But the back inner cover is just random junk that they put in composition books. So I wrote Echoes in small lettering on the back. This is Echoes as in the Pink Floyd song. I was not satisfied with this. So I wrote Long Away. And Across the Universe. And Moonage Daydream. And Tangerine. Until I had a whole wall of songs on the back cover. (Well, it seems like a wall to me!) So now, when I'm bored, I can just write a random song title on the back of my book. All born out of spontinaity. (I can't spell that word.)

And I guess that's how stuff happens.

Venting my frustration.

I went to Office Depot today, after waiting all week for Mum to take me. I had some gift cards, and I had no idea how much was on them. I was hoping a lot. I was pleased to discover that they had 17 bucks on 'em. Now, I wanted to get an iPod card with them, and since I was feeling rich I got two. I tried to buy them along with a special plastic box to put my CD's in (I store my little treasures under my bed), except then I discovered you can't buy iPod cards with gift cards. Very upset, I paid for one in cash and used the card on my box.

I then got the idea to give mum the cards to buy a keyboard for our new computer if she took the cards, which she did. There was some confusion however, it was so confusing I won't get into now. So I was upset because I was of the impression mum was mad at me. In the car she convinced me she wasn't. I went home happy.

I got home and I tried to use the cards. One of them supposedly wasn't valid. (Don't ask me why, it looked totally valid to me.) The other one wasn't activated by the fellow at Office Depot. I was first mad, then I got upset and started crying. I told mum what happened. Now, maybe this doesn't seem like a big deal to you, but you have to remember, I was looking forward to getting those cards all week, and they'd cost me $30 (which doesn't seem like a lot to some but is nearly a fortune to me). And now I couldn't use the bloody things. Mum, who has infinitely more patience than I do, decided she'd try to figure out my technological issues. And viola! She got one of the cards to work. The other one still has yet to be activated. We might see about that tonight. I doubt it though. Mum's having issues with another computer. It won't work. I don't know everything about it as I don't want to get into her problems. (It'd make her mad I fancy.) If we have any luck we might get our problems solved tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. Hopefully within the week. It's Monday.

Anyway, I decided that if the other one didn't work that was no problem, I could just work for money to get myself another one. I am trying to convince myself that money is absolutely nothing and is no object of any kind. But it is, alas. So I used my iPod card that I already had to buy an album, The Six Wives of Henry the Eight. It is a very good album, even if it's all instrumentals. No problem of any kind! (Heck, if Rick Wakeman is the fellow singing in the background of some Yes songs, then maybe I don't want to hear his voice.) Though, Catharine of Aragon sounds a lot like a song I composed (which oddly enough is similarly titled as Aragorn Rhapsody.) Perhaps I shouldn't be so sad, as I got to meet with my best friend today, and we spent four hours of nonstop fun together. Life is admittedly good.

Give us SparkNotes!

Okay. So I was thinking about SparkNotes today. It's kind of a cool concept, if you know what I mean...little study guides for books you might read in school and stuff...I was looking at their website a while back and saw they have study guides for films, too. (Star Wars was one of them, which I found rather funny.)

Except then I thought about it - and then I realized. SparkNotes doesn't have guides on the pieces of art that truly matter. Namely I'm talking about stuff like "Tommy" and "The Wall".

Nope, I'm not kidding. SparkNotes should make a series of books on famous rock operas. I say this because they could actually occasionally be useful. No kidding. A friend of mine who graduated college a while ago told me that once, they had the students do a little lesson-thing on The Wall. Yeah, like the Pink Floyd album. It actually was the Pink Floyd album. And then they made them watch the movie. Yeah...I made a little joke to her about how The Wall is either a piece of genius, horribly depressing, or Roger Waters whining about his life instead of getting one. (If by some random chance Roger Waters is reading this - I apologize and hope he doesn't take it as anything more than a joke.)

So seriously, SparkNotes should make little guides to stuff like The Wall, or Tommy. Tommy's practically a classic as it is! There should seriously be a series of SparkNotes books on albums. If somehow they could figure out a way to do albums that weren't just rock operas, then I'll bet they ought to try something like Sgt. Pepper's. Seriously! Somebody ought to make up this stuff before I get to it. Naah, then I get to say it's my idea. But honestly! They should do that!

No More Computer Room

The computer on which I type all this stuff has moved. No more computer room. It is now in the family room, where one would find the television. The advantage of this is that I can use the piano now. Our piano (Lennon, as I named it) is in the family room. The computer used to be in its own little room. But now it's moved.

Advantages: I can use the piano to record with Lennon now.

Disadvantages: I can't work if my sister is in the room, I can't use Wakeman (the keyboard I used to use) because it's in the other room, and if someone comes into the room (which they ALWAYS do) - I can't work.

Hmm...there's a 1 to 3 ratio of advantages to disadvantages. Do you think I approve of the change?

An EXPERIENCE!

Last night, I had a real EXPERIENCE! (And it wasn't the Jimi Hendrix Experience, ha, I wish...) Aunt Dee-dee, Uncle Gary, my cousin Alicia and I all went to a Korean restaurant for dinner last night! And it was a real experience!

I'm sure you've heard of the restaurants where they cook the food in front of you. They did that. There was a little grill (or whatever you'll call it) in the center of the table, and we got to watch them as they cooked the food for us. They also had some chopsticks for us to use; I'm not really very proficient in the usage of chopsticks, but I was determined to learn how. And, believe it or not, I was actually able to eat my food with no other utensil! (Except for the soup...I used a spoon there, of course...)

The food itself was quite good. I liked the meat a lot, especially the first meat we had (which I guess was some sort of beef, but I'm not totally sure). The soup wasn't quite my thing, but heck, it's not everybody's thing. I liked the bean sprouts that they served us before the meal (an appetizer or something, I guess). It was all quite good.

Sauron's a moron.

I was writing a story today, where one of the characters is named Sorren, and it made me think of how there's an owl called Soren in Guardians of Ga'Hoole. And then I thought about the one time I was talking to my uncle about Lord of the Rings. We were discussing the pronunciations of the names and such, and my uncle brought up the fact that he pronounces Sauron's name as Sorren. I told him that I couldn't say it that way, as Soren is a hero owl in Guardians of Ga'Hoole, and that's how you pronounce his name. So then I told him how I pronounce Sauron. I didn't realize it, but now I do. I say Sauron so that it rhymes with "moron". Since I think certain insult words can be funny if carried into Middle-Earth and such, I mentally made the joke that "Sauron's a moron". Well, not exactly, but it's fairly humorous.

Largely concerning dogs.

Well, I'm back. I had a brilliant time on holiday, and guess what? Bears came through our campsite every night! I didn't see them because I was sleeping, though. The last night there, however, I did see a bear near the dumpsters!

However, that's not the main purpose of my discussion today. (Yeah right...) I was reading Fruits Basket and thinking about Shigure. He's a dog (literally), and I'm a dog on the Chinese zodiac. I think two of my best friends are, too...they're both 14, like me. (One of my friends I'm not sure about, I'll have to ask her.) I decided I wanted to refer to this in a song I could write, but I was also curious about other things. Apparently there are months assosiated with each animal, so I wanted to know which animal's month I was born in. I was born in May, and according to Wikipedia (which I trust for accuracy, so sad), May, the fifth month, is assosiated with the snake. This made me think of Ayame from Fruits Basket...this is a bit unusual, as I have some Ayame-like tendencies. (Hopefully you know what I mean when I use that word...) So the symbolic thing in my song became a "serpent-dog" (dog's year, snake's month). This actually sounds fairly cool.

Then my curiosity got out of hand. I became curious about what year the members of Queen were born in. (One of these days I'm going to do it for the members of all my favorite bands, just you wait...) I discovered, to my surprise, that Freddie Mercury is (was) a dog, too. I've always felt a certain, oh, let's say kinship with Freddie (I once wondered if, were there such a thing as reincarnation, I might be his reincarnation), and the fact that we're both dogs strengthened this feeling. So anyway - I decided I'd put him in the song. (An unusual fact - during this searching, I discovered that Skandar Keynes, who acts as Edmund in the Narnia films, was born on Freddie's birthday in the year he died. Perhaps I shouldn't be the one thinking I'm his reincarnation...)

Then I got interested in what month and what element Freddie turned out to be and well...it ended up that his month of birth was the month of the rabbit. A serpent-dog and a rabbit-dog. This is all interesting of course. His element turned out to be fire, and mine was wood. A wood-dog and a fire-dog paint some very cool images in my head. All this is going to end up in my songs! Hopefully...