Today my mothers' brother died and yet I feel very little. My uncle moved to California from Illinois long before I was born and he had only seen me when I was a small baby and never took much interest in my life. I have always wondered about him and asked my family about him and they all tell me he is a drug addict (so are the rest of the people in my family, so they have no room to talk) and that he has done nothing with his life.
I have always thought to myself "why does that matter?". My family does not know how to love even if they do love each other they don't know how to express or show it and it has been hard on me because I am a passionate person who loves my family and I have never felt it has been reciprocated. I love my family unconditionally regardless of the screwed up things they have done to me and I feel I am a very good person. I have always been emotionally (and financially) neglected by my family, living day to day not knowing if I was going to find food or a place to sleep sometimes, but I have never let that affect too much how much I love them. We are all human and all of us are fallible.
As I have said my uncle never showed any interest in me. He never asked about me or tried to call me or get to know me and it is just another reason I have felt abandonded and unwanted. He never made me feel like a burden like the rest of my family, but he just didn't care and that is worse to me. My father never cared if I was alive either and that has brought me down a great deal in my life making me feel unwanted, unneeded and useless and it has has made me hate everyone who doesnt care about their family members and yet inthe end I have changed my mind and love them regardless.
All in all I am apathetic to it and not sure how to deal with it if I ever do start to care. My mom is hurt; they were close when they were kids, but I am having a hard time talking to her because I don't know what to see or if I will say the wrong thing and hurt her more. Am I wrong to not care? It is not that I am bad person adn don't care about people dying, but it is hard for me to feel anything for a person who is family and doesn't care about me. I am trying to care. I am trying to find any emotion, but it just isn't there yet. What is your opinion? Am I heartless?
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
My view of Tool's album ÆNIMA
Having been more than just an avid Tool fan since I was was 15 or so and their second album "Undertow" already being my favorite album, I was more than eager and estatic to hear the 1997 release of Tool's third highly anticpated album "ÆNIMA". I was an angry kid and the angst and seriousness that "Undertow" and the first album "Opiate" had conveyed and expressed so beautifully was an escape for me; a portal to a world where someone understood how I felt and to place where someone was not just angry and frustrated, but reasonable, logical and pragmatic at the same time. It was a place I could go to help me believe and have faith that there were others out there just like me that had the same mind, the same conciousness and the same hope that I could be better than I was through determination and an iron will. It taught me at a young age that only through learning and teaching myself as much as I could, could I become better than I was and in turm feel better about myself and make fewer mistakes in life by being well prepared and informed.
I heard "Undertow" in 1993 and I was more than content with the album, but I had always knew that they had better in them. I knew that they were exceptional people who wrote exceptional music and that the two previous albums were flawed gems waiting to be polished into perfect jewels. On October 1stof 1996 Tool released their third (second full length) album called "ÆNIMA" and it changed the face of music in my eyes forever. I had found the one thing I needed that I had no idea could exist and it changed how I would view life in general forever.
It has been said that the name of the album is a mix between two words. One is 'anima'; which, is Latin for 'soul' or what some would consider a "life stream" or "life force" like the concept in Final Fantasy 7's "life stream" where when we die all of our souls come together as one to create energy. The second is the word 'enema' which of course the medical term for anal cleansing, but the overall idea and expression of the album was the cleansing of the soul and/or mind. It is also a term to express how in order to understand the album as a whole in its mathematical and symbalistic complexity one needs to attain a hightened awareness and understanding, but yet all the while helping you to gain what you need to understand. Solution.
As with any Tool album it expressed a lot of anger and frustration and although this album seem to be the most angry of all it had an underlying message of hope that we can better ourselves and releive our ignorance through mental, emotional and spiritual evolution by looking into ourselves and having a sort of an enlightenment or illumination. By knowing ourselves truly and thoroughly we can waste less time processing information and come to a definative and logical answer without letting uneccesary emotional barriers effect the conclusion. In this album sometimes the message is hidden and metaphorical, but to me it made me try harder to understand and the best path to me is the hardest earned. Makes for a true understanding.
Musically this album was incredibally evolved. The first bands I compared it to when I first listened to it were Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Rush all of which were pioneers fo their genre, taking musical skill to a whole other level mathematically, harmonically and melodically. The previous albums were great of course, but it was "Aenima" that showed the world what they could do. This album had several very long songs with the longest "My Third Eye" being 13 minutes and 47 seconds and still never a boring moment leading you on a journey the whole time making you forget that time exists.
Songs and my interpretations:
'Stinkfist' 5:11
This song starts the album off with a cool smooth flowing guitar lead in that sets the rythym for the whole song. Many have mistaken this song is about anal fisiting and it couldn't come anywhere near the truth. It as about drug addiction and the battle that addicts put themselves through and yet they want it and need it and love it. It is about hurting yourself to the point of numbness and finally it is all you see and know. It can be compared to a person in an abusive relationship who has always been abused adn it is all they know and they wouldn't know how to live with out it. It is about trusting the thing that hurts you the most.
"Eulogy" 8:28
Of course the christians are automatically pissed of at this song if they don't listen to what he is saying. Here Maynard speaks of a person who spends their life preaching to everyone about what they are doing wrong and yet all the while they are the worst one of all. These people tend to say that their devotion and love is concrete enough to martyr themselves for people and yet when it comes that time to die or suffer their stories change and excuses start to flow. But the underlying meaning here is about Maynards step father who professed his love and goodness to his mother and him all the while raping and molesting Maynard. It is a about hypocrites in general.
"H" 6:07
This is a song Maynard doesn't play much live because it is a horrible reminder of the atrocities he was exposed to as a child by his step father. It expresses that although Maynards intentions are good to his son and wife, ocasionally he finds himself unintentionally hurting them; not physically, but mentally and this song for him in his mind keeps him on the right track. The song on the album if for us while the song he sings is for himself alone.
"Useful Idiot" 0:38
Short intermission of a record player scratching leading into the next song. Sounds uninteresting, but when you hear how it leads into the next song you will see the brilliance of it.
"46 & 2" 6:04
This quite possibly one Tool's greatest songs in every way. This is pretty much the theme of the album about growing mentally and spiritually and reaching that next level of evolution. Expanding our conciousness. It is believed that humans evolve in 3 levels each having it's own kind of conciousness. The first kind was primative man who could not think outside of themselves. This kind had 44 chromosones. The second kind is us and we have 46 chomosones. Our equilibrium of conciousness is not quite stable yet and this is just the middle of our journey to the third level: "46 & 2"; the '2' being the 2 sex chromosones for male and female or "x" and "y". This level should be our final destination or our highest level of conciousness. And yet "46 & 2 are just ahead of me".
"Message to Harry Manback" 1:53
This is a recording of a phone answering message someone got and it is an Italian sounding guy talking crazy violent crap and threatening someone who is basically unknown to me, but Maynard has supposedly put his name as the acronym of the title of this song. It fits perfectly with the mood of the next song.
"Hooker with a Penis" 4:33
This song is about Maynard meeting this young punk who had the balls to sit and tell him that because he made money off of his records and took advantage of the market the Tool were sell outs. Anyone who actually listens to Tool knows that they only write music because they love it, but yet this guy was hating Tool so much for supposedly selling out, but he bought and listened to it himslef and this was just an angry song from maynard telling the kid to f*** off. It is better to express anger through music than through real life... I do. I love this song!
"Intermission" 0:56
A short intermission. Just maynards happier side this was put in as a pleasant joke. No lyrics.
"jimmy" 5:24
Maynard James Keenans real name is James Hubert Keenan and as a child was known as jimmy; expressing the 'j' as lower case to signify the time in his life as a little boy. WHen he was a eleven years old is when is step father came in to his life and mentally tore him away from his mother with his abuse. It is about his mother being his guiding light to find his way back home. This is one my favorite overall Tool songs and has an incredible climatic ending.
"Die Eier von Satan" 2:17
"the eggs (or balls) of satan"
This was a psychological test of sorts for fun. It is a man speaking in german and it sound like some evil speaker like Adolf Hitler speaking real angrily. What the guy was speaking was actually the recipe for some food item. It tested to see how many people would accuse them for being evil satan worshippers without even reseaching to see what was being said. Persecution without investigation as was popular to the religious inquisitors.
"Pushit" 9:55
One of my favorite songs as well. This song is about someone who all they know is abuse and they can't seem to live any other way and so being beat on is comfortable to them and if it doesn't happen to them they have trouble functioning because they are taken from their natural envirement. It is partially about someone ruining everything good in their life on purpose because they don't of any other way to function. It has both meanings to me.
"Cesaro Summability" 1:26
This is like an intermission, has a baby cryin in it. Cesaro Summability is some kind of mathematics thing about infinite series of sums coinciding, but I'm not too sure about it yet. Here it is part of the evolution of the album.
"Ænema" 6:39
I couldn't wait to write this part and alot of Californians are going to hate me and call me an idiot, but so be it, this is how I see it. This is Maynard praying for California to fall of into the ocean. As I have always felt, California, especially southern Califrnia is the most trendy superfical fake part of the world; especially L.A. and Hollywood and because of hollywood it spreads it's culture through films and media and it infects the rest of the world causing young easily pursuaded kids to care more about fashion and trend than the things that are more important in life. There are many things he complains about in this album, but I feel he has the most pragmatic solution, "Learn to swim". LOL This is my anthem seeing that I am from U.S. and ashamed that California is part of our Union. I don't blame all Californians and especially not Northern Californians, but there is more good than bad.
"(-) Ions" 4:00
This is a long fill in intermission that is good to meditate to. It sounds like cracking electricity in a lab or something and is just hypnotizing.
... and to the culmination of what Tool adn this album is about...
"Third Eye" 13:47
Yes this is partially where I get the name fo rmy Tool fan site "My Third Eye" which is my evolution and illumination. This is the idea that there are unseen truths and subtleties that we can't see with our normal vision. We have to see with our third eye or our minds eye to experience some sort of enlightenment such as that of Bhudda's and so on. Our journey to reaching a spiritual higher conciousness is only sought through this is and we have to clear the cob webs from our eye to truly see the light. We close ourselves tooo much to the true visions of truth that are really there."Prying open my third eye".
If you have come this far thank you for reading and I hope that you have enjoyed this journey. It has been a great one for me.
I heard "Undertow" in 1993 and I was more than content with the album, but I had always knew that they had better in them. I knew that they were exceptional people who wrote exceptional music and that the two previous albums were flawed gems waiting to be polished into perfect jewels. On October 1stof 1996 Tool released their third (second full length) album called "ÆNIMA" and it changed the face of music in my eyes forever. I had found the one thing I needed that I had no idea could exist and it changed how I would view life in general forever.
It has been said that the name of the album is a mix between two words. One is 'anima'; which, is Latin for 'soul' or what some would consider a "life stream" or "life force" like the concept in Final Fantasy 7's "life stream" where when we die all of our souls come together as one to create energy. The second is the word 'enema' which of course the medical term for anal cleansing, but the overall idea and expression of the album was the cleansing of the soul and/or mind. It is also a term to express how in order to understand the album as a whole in its mathematical and symbalistic complexity one needs to attain a hightened awareness and understanding, but yet all the while helping you to gain what you need to understand. Solution.
As with any Tool album it expressed a lot of anger and frustration and although this album seem to be the most angry of all it had an underlying message of hope that we can better ourselves and releive our ignorance through mental, emotional and spiritual evolution by looking into ourselves and having a sort of an enlightenment or illumination. By knowing ourselves truly and thoroughly we can waste less time processing information and come to a definative and logical answer without letting uneccesary emotional barriers effect the conclusion. In this album sometimes the message is hidden and metaphorical, but to me it made me try harder to understand and the best path to me is the hardest earned. Makes for a true understanding.
Musically this album was incredibally evolved. The first bands I compared it to when I first listened to it were Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Rush all of which were pioneers fo their genre, taking musical skill to a whole other level mathematically, harmonically and melodically. The previous albums were great of course, but it was "Aenima" that showed the world what they could do. This album had several very long songs with the longest "My Third Eye" being 13 minutes and 47 seconds and still never a boring moment leading you on a journey the whole time making you forget that time exists.
Songs and my interpretations:
'Stinkfist' 5:11
This song starts the album off with a cool smooth flowing guitar lead in that sets the rythym for the whole song. Many have mistaken this song is about anal fisiting and it couldn't come anywhere near the truth. It as about drug addiction and the battle that addicts put themselves through and yet they want it and need it and love it. It is about hurting yourself to the point of numbness and finally it is all you see and know. It can be compared to a person in an abusive relationship who has always been abused adn it is all they know and they wouldn't know how to live with out it. It is about trusting the thing that hurts you the most.
"Eulogy" 8:28
Of course the christians are automatically pissed of at this song if they don't listen to what he is saying. Here Maynard speaks of a person who spends their life preaching to everyone about what they are doing wrong and yet all the while they are the worst one of all. These people tend to say that their devotion and love is concrete enough to martyr themselves for people and yet when it comes that time to die or suffer their stories change and excuses start to flow. But the underlying meaning here is about Maynards step father who professed his love and goodness to his mother and him all the while raping and molesting Maynard. It is a about hypocrites in general.
"H" 6:07
This is a song Maynard doesn't play much live because it is a horrible reminder of the atrocities he was exposed to as a child by his step father. It expresses that although Maynards intentions are good to his son and wife, ocasionally he finds himself unintentionally hurting them; not physically, but mentally and this song for him in his mind keeps him on the right track. The song on the album if for us while the song he sings is for himself alone.
"Useful Idiot" 0:38
Short intermission of a record player scratching leading into the next song. Sounds uninteresting, but when you hear how it leads into the next song you will see the brilliance of it.
"46 & 2" 6:04
This quite possibly one Tool's greatest songs in every way. This is pretty much the theme of the album about growing mentally and spiritually and reaching that next level of evolution. Expanding our conciousness. It is believed that humans evolve in 3 levels each having it's own kind of conciousness. The first kind was primative man who could not think outside of themselves. This kind had 44 chromosones. The second kind is us and we have 46 chomosones. Our equilibrium of conciousness is not quite stable yet and this is just the middle of our journey to the third level: "46 & 2"; the '2' being the 2 sex chromosones for male and female or "x" and "y". This level should be our final destination or our highest level of conciousness. And yet "46 & 2 are just ahead of me".
"Message to Harry Manback" 1:53
This is a recording of a phone answering message someone got and it is an Italian sounding guy talking crazy violent crap and threatening someone who is basically unknown to me, but Maynard has supposedly put his name as the acronym of the title of this song. It fits perfectly with the mood of the next song.
"Hooker with a Penis" 4:33
This song is about Maynard meeting this young punk who had the balls to sit and tell him that because he made money off of his records and took advantage of the market the Tool were sell outs. Anyone who actually listens to Tool knows that they only write music because they love it, but yet this guy was hating Tool so much for supposedly selling out, but he bought and listened to it himslef and this was just an angry song from maynard telling the kid to f*** off. It is better to express anger through music than through real life... I do. I love this song!
"Intermission" 0:56
A short intermission. Just maynards happier side this was put in as a pleasant joke. No lyrics.
"jimmy" 5:24
Maynard James Keenans real name is James Hubert Keenan and as a child was known as jimmy; expressing the 'j' as lower case to signify the time in his life as a little boy. WHen he was a eleven years old is when is step father came in to his life and mentally tore him away from his mother with his abuse. It is about his mother being his guiding light to find his way back home. This is one my favorite overall Tool songs and has an incredible climatic ending.
"Die Eier von Satan" 2:17
"the eggs (or balls) of satan"
This was a psychological test of sorts for fun. It is a man speaking in german and it sound like some evil speaker like Adolf Hitler speaking real angrily. What the guy was speaking was actually the recipe for some food item. It tested to see how many people would accuse them for being evil satan worshippers without even reseaching to see what was being said. Persecution without investigation as was popular to the religious inquisitors.
"Pushit" 9:55
One of my favorite songs as well. This song is about someone who all they know is abuse and they can't seem to live any other way and so being beat on is comfortable to them and if it doesn't happen to them they have trouble functioning because they are taken from their natural envirement. It is partially about someone ruining everything good in their life on purpose because they don't of any other way to function. It has both meanings to me.
"Cesaro Summability" 1:26
This is like an intermission, has a baby cryin in it. Cesaro Summability is some kind of mathematics thing about infinite series of sums coinciding, but I'm not too sure about it yet. Here it is part of the evolution of the album.
"Ænema" 6:39
I couldn't wait to write this part and alot of Californians are going to hate me and call me an idiot, but so be it, this is how I see it. This is Maynard praying for California to fall of into the ocean. As I have always felt, California, especially southern Califrnia is the most trendy superfical fake part of the world; especially L.A. and Hollywood and because of hollywood it spreads it's culture through films and media and it infects the rest of the world causing young easily pursuaded kids to care more about fashion and trend than the things that are more important in life. There are many things he complains about in this album, but I feel he has the most pragmatic solution, "Learn to swim". LOL This is my anthem seeing that I am from U.S. and ashamed that California is part of our Union. I don't blame all Californians and especially not Northern Californians, but there is more good than bad.
"(-) Ions" 4:00
This is a long fill in intermission that is good to meditate to. It sounds like cracking electricity in a lab or something and is just hypnotizing.
... and to the culmination of what Tool adn this album is about...
"Third Eye" 13:47
Yes this is partially where I get the name fo rmy Tool fan site "My Third Eye" which is my evolution and illumination. This is the idea that there are unseen truths and subtleties that we can't see with our normal vision. We have to see with our third eye or our minds eye to experience some sort of enlightenment such as that of Bhudda's and so on. Our journey to reaching a spiritual higher conciousness is only sought through this is and we have to clear the cob webs from our eye to truly see the light. We close ourselves tooo much to the true visions of truth that are really there."Prying open my third eye".
If you have come this far thank you for reading and I hope that you have enjoyed this journey. It has been a great one for me.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Cross browser coding tips.
First of all let me say that I am not going to teach you how to cross browser code here. I am going to show you the best way to chose in what order is best to code so that you don't have to make as many changes; going back and forth and testing and so forth and so on.
Any web designer knows that cross browser coding is a bitch. We would loved to think that the cross browser wars will end soon, but as a browser company fixes one thing to be compatible with the other browsers it changes something else and then there is a whole new problem.
You code for the browsers as such: Firefox and Opera (both Mozilla) are about the same, Google Chrome and Apple Safari are about the same and then finally Internet Explorer all by its' lonesome.
The best way to start a project in my opinion is to code for Firefox/Opera first and then make your hack fixes for IE and Chrome/Safari later. The only problem with this is that FF isn't 100% the same as it's sister Opera and Chrome isn't exactly the same as as Safari. So now we have to pick one of the two that is most important: Do we sacrifice FF for Opera? Or Opera for FF? Unfortunately FF is far more used than Opera so FF is the winner. Do we sacrifice Chrome for Safari or Vice versa? Well on this I'm not 100% sure because even though more people use Windows than Mac, Apple's Safari is on both operating systems and Chrome is alot newer than Safari, so it is a toss up. I would say code for Chrome, because I am somewhat anti-Apple. My main problem I find is that relative positioning is off by 1px in both situations.
Coding for IE's is a whole different ball game. You have to code for both IE7 and IE6 which I hate.
IE7 luckily has its own seperate style sheet, but when coding for IE6 and all the other browsers you need to use the Lite Pacific Hack. You can use that hack for IE7 as well, but I prefer the to ise IE7's own style sheet (call it ie.css, I do) which can be linked to your html in your head section with this line of code:
< ! - -[if IE]>
< rel="stylesheet" href="ie.css" type="text/css">
< ! [endif]- - >
remove spaces in between < ! - - and - - > above.
What happens here is that when the browser parses the code it will check to see what browser is parsing and if it is IE7 then it use styles and rules from the ie.css instead of the normal style sheet. If it is not IE7 then it uses the normal code.
There are many debates on whether cross browser hacks are useful or not and I say they are, just don't waste your time thinking it is the only solution, these hacks can cuase more problems than fixes if you aren't 100% what you are doing; even the most seasoned coder can have problems in this area. Always look for non-hack solutions first and when all else fails...
Some coders think they are slick for figuring out hacks, thinking they are so smart and then they use hacks in all their code making their page files large with alot of sloppy code that isn't necessary. Make your page as small and clean as possible so that your page loads fast. To learn how to use the Lite Pacific hack click the link above. The rest is up to you, if you aren't already quite fluent in CSS then this article is too advanced for you know and you should bookmark me (ctrl+d) and come back later. Any questions? Leave a comment and email address.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
What being agnostic means to me.
To me being agnostic means that I spend every day of my life learning. Every second I am awake I try to learn something whether it be trivial or essential to living my life. Being agnostic to me means that I am open minded enough to accept that anything is possible, but at the same time be wise enough to use logic and reason to evaluate those things which aren't likely to happen. And if with my conclusions I come to a point of disbelief, not by facts, but with educated intellectual thought process, then I will still be wise enough to admit that my belief could be wrong and be open minded enough to consider others theories and ideas.
There are several dictionaries with various defintions, but they all say about the same thing. They say that an agnostic is a person who neither believes nor disbelieves in a god or gods. It says they simply do not know. In a way the dictionaries are right. The root word of 'agnostic' is 'gnosis', which, is Greek for 'knowledge' or 'to know'. The prefix 'a-' means 'to be against' or a negative like 'to not'. The word 'agnostic simply means 'to not know'. Yet someone, and I don't know who, but at some point in time someone grabbed that word and made it their own meaning, associating it with religion and god when it really has nothing to do with god. Anyone who is willing to admit that they don't know something is also a person who is willing to learn and better themselves. It is someone who spends their life learning as much as they can to evolve... evolve their minds and spirituality. Evolve whatever part of themselves that needs improvement, and we all need improvement.
On the subjects that can't be proven like a god/s, heaven and hell, why are we so apt to think we are right? Who knows who is right? If there isn't a definitive proof then why do we force that idea upon others? Why are there so many differents sects of religion and why do most of these sects want to fight each other? Why do we believe so strongly in these things that we have no proof of and get angry or frustrated at others who don't believe the things we do? All this has done through out time is cause difference of opinions which causes arguements which causes feuds and in turn causes wars.
When we can easily admit that we don't know something we can move on past that and learn it instead of holding ourselves back by thinking we know everything; thinking we are right in our beliefs. We can not evolve intellectually, mentally or spiritually when we are closed minded. When we can't accept that we are wrong.
To me being agnostic means that I am evolving. It means that I am expanding my intellectual capacity and it means that I am accelerating my thought process. It means that I don't waste my time building barriers of disbelief and unreasonableness. When we are flexible we may bend far, but we will never break and we will bounce back stronger than ever.
This is what being agnostic is to me. This is my mind and my journey and it will continue.....
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