"You don't understand." I seem to be told that a lot. I'm just a naive boy that understands nothing. Of course I don't understand, I'm not ridiculous like you. Fuck you. Understand this:

           /´¯/)  
          /¯¯'/   
         /   /     
    /´¯¯/  '/´¯¯·¸
 /'/   /   /   /¨¨/¯\
('(   ´   ´    ¯;/' ')
 \             '    /
 '\'  \         _.·´
   \           (
    \          \
     \          \

I don't need you.

Look, a test page.

    Uh oh, Alkaline Trio's new album "Good Mourning" drops May 13! Check out Vagrant Record's promotion. Here's the track list:

Track List
1. This Could Be Love
2. We've Had Enough
3. 100 Stories
4. Continental
5. All On Black
6. Emma
7. Fatally Yours
8. Every Thug Needs A Lady
9. Blue Carolina
10. Donner Party
11. If We Never Go Inside
12. Blue In The Face

Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck... I just realized I'll be in France that day... grr... they better have good music in France. I know Drive-Thru Records exists in France, so there's hope yet.

So, wow, 12 hours later and I'm back here wasting time once more. I should be reading for my INTA test tomorrow. Fuck that. I'm gonna listen to Alkaline Trio. Songs of interest: Crawl, Cooking Wine, Fuck You Aurora, Stupid Kid, This Is Getting Over You. Music downloading binge time.

    It's almost 2:30am. And I just finished doing circuits homework due tomorrow. Actually, it's due today. Noon. I had 2 whole weeks to do it, and I waited until about 10 PM to start. This past week was spring break, too, and I didn't do a damn thing except reformat my computer. I suck. I'm such a dork. My old hard drive was being dumb and found a sudden affinity towards acting profoundly retarded. It took it at least 3 days just to format 27 GB. So I got a new 80 GB hard drive. And I called Maxtor about the 27 GB since I discovered it was still under warranty. So they're sending me a replacement. Yay, 3 hard drives. But I'm giving it to my dear sister, since I'm so nice and have no space for a 3rd hard drive.

So our anticipated Led Zeppelin-esque Shotgun Morning practices and songwriting never happened. Jon was too busy with stuff, I was so unbusy that I was busy, and Zach disappeared for a few days.

The weather is always amazing whenever I have a lot of shit to do. Today, I forced myself to make time to go out and play soccer for a bit, but Matt suddenly realized he had a "big" project due the next day. Man, any time we want to hangout with each other, the other person is always caught up with something. This sucks, he's graduating this semester, too. I think... It's late, forgive me.

Last few songs I've listened to: Nick Drake - From the Morning, Finch - Post Script, Norah Jones - I've Got to See You Again, Social Distortion - I Was Wrong, Yellowcard - Rock Star Land. Songs I want to listen to now that I listed the last few songs I've listened to: Ataris - I Remember You, N'Sync - I Drive Myself Crazy, Led Zeppelin - Fool in the Rain, Black Sabbath - Paranoid, Starting Line - I'm Real, Ash - Shining Light, Finch - Post Script. I love that Finch song, it's so infectious. I'm even about to put it up as my away message. So here're the words:

i wish it didn't hurt, hurt like this,
to say these things to you.

i'll sacrifice one moment,
for one truth
if we get through tomorrow,
then we'll be fine.
we'll wait for forever,
and see how close we get.

it's just another day,
one more chance to get this right.

i'll sacrifice forever,
please just for tonight
if we get through tomorrow,
then we'll be fine
We'll wait for forever,
and see how close we get.

the worst is over for now
take a breath, now let it out.

I updated my concert list in my AIM profile. Ahh, music is an addiction. I can't stop...

Oh, I have an excuse as to why I started my circuits hw so late... I was busy designing my very own guitar. It's actually a project that was assigned in my 3D graphics class. I'm completely in love with this class. My guitar is gonna be tight. I spent so much time on little details... The volume and tone knobs are reminiscent of the Les Paul knobs with the gold knob capped with a clear plastic top giving a cool reflective glass effect, except I made my knob black. And I even added a decal to give give them the numbers from 1-10. My pickups consist of a high output single coil blade pickup at the neck, and standard single coil in the middle, and a chromed-out les paul style humbucker complete with individual pole height adjusters. Each pickup has its very own volume and tone knobs. I designed a custom 7-position selector switch so you can have a choice of any combination of pickups possible... by "designed" I mean I'm telling you it's a custom 7-selector switch, you just can't see that it is in the design. The only thing visibly "custom" about it is the switch is in the shape of an "A". Of course, my own guitar wouldn't be complete with a hard tail bridge for through-body stringing. I used the Fender American Standard type bridge as a model... I figured the Les Paul bridge setup would be way more complicated. For the neck, I used an ebony fingerboard on a maple neck. The headstock is symmetrical with a 3x3 machinehead configuration. I'm very proud of actual headstock It has a cut out of and "A" and a "D" for "Ausassin Designs." And i added a truss rod cover of my own design. And I added a small decal of "Ausassin Designs" where the headstock meets the fingerboard. I spent entirely too much time on this so far... I think I spent about 6 hours today and 3 hours yesterday. I'll put pictures up of it eventually. The last thing I was working on was the main body. I wanted to save that for last since it's the part that can be left up to the imagination without totally hindering functionality... I do want to build my own guitar someday, and this would be a good place for practice. So my first body style I made just so i could see how everything looked... Zach said it looks like the Artist Formerly Known as Prince's guitar. Fuck. But mine has a AAAAA quilted maple top! Prince can't say that. Whatever, I can draw up another design.

Ping pong is a sport?? Damn right it is!

I miss my best friend. I miss having a best friend. Update (3/16/03): fuck that shit, what best friend?

    I love Kool-Aid. It's totally addicting. Mmm... flavored liquid-sugar. I can't stop drinking it. I should learn how to make Kool-Aid. I feel kinda bad always drinking the Kool-Aid that my roommates make while I never contributte to this greatness... maybe I'm just afraid... afraid my Kool-Aid skills don't match up with theirs. I should make practice batches in my room, that way they'll never know. And when I finally let my skills out into the public, They'll be totally amazed at my perfect mixture of sugar, Kool-Aid powder, water and sugar... especially since it will be my "first" time making it. Hahaha. I'm incredibly sneaky.

I got a 74% on my circuits quiz on which I answered 2.5 questions out of 4. Incredible. One jackass decided to get a 100%. The only fucking A on the test. And then there were 3 random B's.

My 3D graphics professor is amazing. Since I'm not an industrial design major, his grading criteria on my projects is void of any layout, design, and functionality points...

Yes, that IS a Shotgun Morning coffee mug and YES it IS almost twice as big as the Jiffy cornbread mix box. I like my coffee supersized into 40 oz containers, nothing less. His comment: "This is a HUGE mug!" So I'm getting 100%'s on every single project thus far. I love this class. Here's another rendering of radness:

I think I should switch majors to industrial design. It's so easy. Well, that's not a good reason... the best reason is I love it. I spent 5 hours straight yesterday doing that last rendering. I can't say I've done that for anything else. I mean, I've studied longer than that, but I always take breaks. I wonder if they offer an ID minor... Nope, looks like they do not. Fakers.

I got my bill for study abroad. I owe a shitload of money. All that money I made in Washington... yeah, it will all be gone by the end of summer, just in time for me to start work again. So I sent off my acceptance for the Fullerton, CA position. I'm now bound to it. Can't change a thing. How depressing. I move around too much. Every damn semester. Fuck. I need to settle down.

Funny as hell.

Last night I was jamming and making up riffs. I sent some to Jon and Zach, and it turns out that I am super emo. Fuck. Everything I did I was like "this rocks! Listen to it!" Then they were like "that's totally emo, stop it." So I tried to be dark and heavy... my first attempt sounded like hardcore emo. My second attempt was decent in that it wasn't emoish. Towards the end of the night as my creative stream exhausted, I made up a fucking cool riff that sounded vaguely familiar... I was like "dude, this is amazing, but for some reason, it sounds familiar..." Jon comes back with "dude, that IS amazing, especially since you ripped off the intro to "One" by Metallica." Dangit, I made up an existing riff, so I guess I didn't really make it up then. Frustrating. I suck.

Interesting archived news article about marijuana. It could save lives!

More news amazingness... Penis transplant! Heh heh... I mean, OWWW!...

The baby without a penis had been urinating through his rectum.

That sounds obscenely painful. At least the baby won't remember this. If he does, he'll be scarred fo life. I wonder if the surgery never occurred... I wonder what it'd be like to have... yeah, you know where I'm going with this...

Since everyone else is doing it, I'm gonna list current music I'm listening to (ok, like 4 people that I know of are doing this, but that's beside the point). Albums: Early November "Acoustic EP", All-American Rejects self titled debut, Vagrant Records Sampler from March 2003 issue of Spin Mag, Norah Jones "Come Away With Me", The Used's self titled debut, Unwritten Law "Elva". Other songs: Otis Redding "I Love You More Than Words Can Say", Creedence Clearwater Revival "Fortunate Son", Tupac f. Nas "Thugz Mansion (acoustic)"Stone Temple Pilots "Big Empty", Frankie Smith "Double Dutch Bus", Goldfinger "Open Your Eyes". I think I listen to too much music. Oh shit, what am I saying, I should slap myself for saying that! I can't believe I just said that, I'm gonna have to punish myself by listening to more music, starting with Bad Religion "I Love My Computer".

    I got an amp!! Meet my baby, my Super Fender, a Fender Super 210 combo amplifier, 70 lbs. of 60 watts of all tube love pulsing through 2 10" speakers enclosed in a 2' wide by 1.5' tall by 1' deep cabinet. Mmm mmm. That picture isn't of my amp, but it's the same model. Jon got a Marshall VS100, a 100 watt hybrid combo amp, and Zach got an Ampeg Rocket Amp or something like that... i just know it has "Rocket" somewhere in the name... 100 watts of solid state power. It has wheels too, even though his amp is actually the lightest out of all our amps. I need wheels for my amp. It's a bitch carrying my guitar AND a 70 lbs. amp down from my room to UTC. Yeah, I know, that's like 100 ft, but YOU try doing it. The amp is very awkward to handle, even by someone as diesel as me. Heh. Anyway, Shotgun Morning can now be heard. If I turn the volume past 3, it drowns out the drummer. I love it.

We had practice last night. With our newest addition to the lineup, Chris the drummer. The only way he was allowed in the band was if he could drum better than me. So basically, he was automatically in the band, since I suck at drumming. That's why I play a REAL instrument like guitar. Just playin', drumming requires some skill... SOME (that comment was not directed to anyone in particular, and it was especially not directed towards anyone I know in Seattle, either). I think I have tempo problems... my timing really sucks, it's hard to tell if i'm in time with the drummer. I guess it's cuz I'm not used to following drums since I usually follow bass. Like, I didn't even know how the drumming part went until yesterday cuz I never paid attention to it before. But Zach knew it, so our rhythm section was right on. I was usually the one who was off, and then that usually caused Jon to be offbeat as well. I suck. But dang, yo, I love being in a band. Even though we may not be the best at our respective instruments in any way, It'd just so much freakin' fun. It's so amazing when we're all on perfectly on beat and sounding just like Silverchair... Oh, we were practicing mostly "Tomorrow" last night. Jon finally learned how he should sing. Except that it tears up his throat, since he basically has to scream at the top of his vocal range to sound amazing.

So then I went skating at an FSA mixer at Skate-A-Long USA... rink skating. My body hurts soooo much. Especially my groin... thereby making skating a real sport, since only in real sports is it possible to have groin injuries (statement courtesy of Tiger-philosophy). So, nonsports often mistaken for real sports: golf, chess, ping pong (come on, who can pull a groin running back and forth in 4 square feet of floor?), uh... I know there's a ton more, but whatever. There were some hardcore speed skaters there. Like this little 8 year old girl with an attitude... she was kicking my ass. Then again, she had speed skates and I had my street skates with high durometer wheels that don't stick to smooth surfaces at all and prefer to slip instead. Not that I'm making excuses or anything. Ok, maybe she could still kick my ass if I had speed skates. So my first skating experience in quite awhile... at least I can turn left really smoothly now, since that was they only direction the allowed us to skate in. I don't even know if I can turn right anymore. Bastards.

Oh yeah... I'm definitely gonna be cooping in Fullerton, California fall semester. Kinda sucks. But oh well. They sent my confirmation/coop acceptance thing and I have to respond by the end of the month. If I decide to wait for Roswell, I may not even have a job for fall, so I don't want to risk it. Especially considering they told me that I basically had a negative zero percent chance of getting a position at Roswell. I don't have enough seniority within the KC coop heirarchy, I presume. I really wanted to be on campus for a fall semester. I haven't been here during fall for the last 2 years. And this will be my third. Stupid double coop term. It was such a blessing and a curse.

    Electronic equipment is expensive. It costs like $600 for a simple 50W tube amplifier head, another $400 for a 4x12 speaker cabinet, and $90 for a simple distortion pedal. Damn. No wonder musicians are broke. Shit's fucking expensive. I think I'll build my own stuff. Jon and I decided we're gonna build our own speaker cabs. He has a friend who knows all about it. His friend can even build his own effects. Or, at least in theory he can, he's never done it before but knows how to. I found a cool site on how to make my own effects pedals. I could have so much fun... Too bad I don't know much about electronics diagrams. If someone could please build me a Boss MT-2 effects pedal, I will give you a cookie. Here's the schematic for it. Do it!

Ok, those aren't very clear, are they? Dangit. If you actually want to see legible schematics, here's the first page, and here's the second page.

We had our first practice as a full band yesterday. We progressed so much. Like we all had our own style coming in and they didn't quite fit together, like we sounded really ragged when we tried to play together, but by the end, we sounded amazing. Well, amazing for this being everyone's first band and playing with others for the first time ever. The amazingness of Shotgun Morning transcends the word "amazingness." Oh yeah, our very first fansite! Ok, it's not a "fan" site in the strictest sense of the word... Zach the bassist made the page. And you're not deceived...the only content is the logo I made. But the page rocks!

One of my friends is in Hawaii for almost a week. I'm jealous.

Friday night was tight, ya'll. Potluck->drinking->partying. I got quickly buzzed on miniscule amounts of alcohol. I'm a really cheap date. When we got to the club, I think I was dancing for like an hour before I realized I'd never danced for real before... and I didn't back up! If you don't know, you needn't ask... hehe.

Juliana Theory concert is this Tuesday. I can't wait. Like my toes are twitching in anticipation right now. And I just found out that The Used are going to be here April 11th, meaning I'm going to be there. I can't handle this. Freakin' ridiculous.

    Yo yo yo, my peoples. Listen, listen... Shotgun Morning is coming soon to aurally please your senses exposing them to new sounds unknown. You shall know what life truly is. You shall experience true music. Well... maybe once we get a drummer. And once we write our own stuff instead of covering grunge songs. Oh, and also once we figure out if we really don't suck. Our practice on Sunday consisted of Zach with his electric bass unplugged most of the time, and me and Jon playing on acoustics. We didn't exactly have the grunge sound we were going for... but this weekend Jon's getting his electric and amp from home. So that leaves me: electric guitar, but no amp... I've had my electric for like 4-5 years, but never bothered getting an amp. I'm hardcore like that. I need to hit up a pawn shop or something. I don't really want to spend more than $50 on an amp. Hopefully I'll get crazy bang-for-the-buck and end up with a 100 watt Marshall tube amp and stack. Or better yet, a Mesa Boogie. Or maybe I'll just get a dinky little solid state 15-watter. It'll be my gig amp. Everyone will be awed by my tiny amp wondering what sounds could possibly come from such a piece of shit. Then they will know... yeah, they'll know it's a POS just like they thought. Heh. Oh yeah, Shotgun Morning is our name. It took us all of 30 minutes to come up with it. Actually, it took us 3 days, but when we all actually got together, it only took 30 minutes. And that amazing professional quality logo was drawn by none other than me when I was dozing off in circuits the other day. I like to draw when I'm about to pass out... it keeps me awake, usually. Our official colors that happened by accident: crimson and black. Yizzea. So, like, in order to distract people from our initial suckiness, we're gonna have mad merchandise. Everyone's gonna be like, "Dude, check out this Shotgun Morning gear. It's so AWESOME, it's gotten me like 20 chicks in the last hour!"

So that circuits test I thought I so horribly failed... yeah, I killed that shit. 89%. BAM! Fifth or sixth highest grade in the class. Incredible. Especially considering I did the entire first problem in the 5 minutes after he called time (not to brag or anything). I only missed like 2 points on it. Man, one point from an A. I'm pissed now. I was stupid and I could've easily gotten six more points total from 2 stupid negative sign mistakes. I have another 2 tests tomorrow, and look at me, wasting my time being dumb. Intro to INTA. Lots of reading. It's almost 11:30pm and I have to read an entire book... All Quiet on the Western Front. Not to mention about half of all the reading assignments since the beginning of the semester. I'm royally fucked. And bright and early tomorrow morning just as the sun peeps over the mountains (ok, no mountains here, but in Seattle, the sun loves to peep over the mountains), I have a rude awakening with a thermo test. I can't wait. So bye bye.

News Archive (6/15/02-01/31/03)...    

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