Happy New Year

Today is December 30th 2017,

Happy soon-to-be 2018.  Hope whatever holiday you had was nice.  Be that Christmas, Festivus or some kind of pagan goat blood ritual.  I know most people visit this blog for guitar related stuff, but allow me to revert back to the old blog format briefly.   Frankly, my last few guitar related experiments, haven't sounded all that great, and weren't worth posting.  Trust me.  Hopefully new guitar stuff in the future.  I don't like jinxing things this early, but there will be new music in 2018.  Currently working on a new Godzilla Snackas EP, and there probably will be at least 2-3 BSS recordings and maybe a 7" record in the UK.

I guess this state of the union address is really just me publicly thinking out loud about the world and how I and everyone interacts in it as of 2017.  I've been increasingly feeling weird about social media, and it's use in my life.  The last few months, I've backed away from facebook.  I'm not sure how we got to this place currently, but it doesn't feel right.  I remember life before FB and I remember maybe being a bit happier.  One less thing to check and have feelings about.  Perhaps I was more patient and trivial things were less immediate.  A lot of these disconnects and changes in our lives felt like they happened overnight.  I remember a day back in 2008 when people started only sending me text messages.  The phone calls stopped.  Things have felt more and more disconnected since then, and I don't think that's how we were meant to interact with each other.  I question if everyone so absorbed in social media, who at times shouting at a proverbial wall, is truly happier now.  It's been very unnerving to see how politically degrading things have gotten.  It's infiltrated our everyday lives and entertainment.   I'm exhausted by it all.  Even by people I agree with in my own echo chamber.

I guess to sum up what I'm saying is, be good to each other.  Or at least a little better.  Maybe turn off some of the noise and find new ways to connect to people.  Maybe remember those with opposing views you can still find value and friendship with.  Value other peoples lives a bit more.  Even if the general public is hard to deal with.  Alright, this all I wish for in 2018.  I updated the photos archive on the site for anyone feeling nostalgic.  I'll hopefully update some more stuff soon.  In the meantime, I'll be back to working on music, pedals, guitar stuff and art.   

Too Much Noise.

I find myself tuning out more and more.  Everything these days just seems like a wash.  Too much noise.  The noise I speak of has little to do with sound, but content.  I listen to loud noisy guitar music everyday on my bike everywhere I go.  Somehow all that screeching guitar feedback is more soothing to me than the human voice most times. It’s the over-stimulation that has left me under-stimulated, if that makes sense. 

I'm overwhelmed by useless information, sensationalism, and the disposable culture this world has churned out more and more of.  I find myself checking facebook, and twitter less these days.  The content of 90% of my "friends" is pretty disheartening, uninteresting, or just hostile.   I can only assume the same can be said of some of my content as well.  What was supposed to be a great way for me to keep in contact with friends and family has turned into very little actual interaction, only blind spam like sharing.  The internet card meme thing has worn old, pretty damn quickly too.  Nothing like someone else writing your feelings for you.  Few people seem to be interested in what everyone has to say or what they're actually doing.  We're all now plugged in now to share the mundane that would probably be best left unshared or unliked, or "poked" or whatever. 

This is all ironic too, when I hear so much about our lack of privacy in this age.  Yet, it seems people are perfectly fine sharing so much of their personal lives, and few will give a second thought to uploading any picture onto a social media site.   No one is forcing anyone to do any of this.  Yet there is this huge outrage, I digress, but the point is, more noise. 

How much more noise do we need?  I find my head hurting and my resolve in my fellow humans low at times because of this noise.  This post is more crap added to the pile in the grand scheme of things.  Where do we go from here?  I think it's time for me to step back a bit.  I might even throw my cellphone away, as I rarely have real human interactions these days.  It's rare I even hear a human voice at the other end of my "phone".  Just cold straight text messages or emails.  As much as I tend to loath a lot of humanity, I still need human interactions.  It's what makes me human.


 Or maybe it’s just time for me to start yelling at the neighborhood kids to “get off my lawn”.