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fallingpianos
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Name: Will
Country: United States
State: Oregon
Gender: Male
Interests: Music, piano, keyboards, B-3 organ, computers, skiing, golf, wakeboarding, whitewater rafting, torturing the cat
Expertise: Music, purchasing, computers, and now the art of sales coordinating
Occupation: Operations
Industry: Business
Message: message me
Member Since:
12/16/2005
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| I am addicted to ice cream. In fact, I'm eating some right now as I type. I have some just about every night if it's in the freezer. I used to get the expensive stuff, like Breyers, but due to the Obama economy, I now get the cheap no-name gallon tub and wash it down with lots of chocolate syrup. It's like I don't even care where the next fix is coming from. I can't help it. I gotta have the stuff. I feel like such a bad person. But it's not like I'm hurting anybody with my habit. I don't even eat and drive, even though McDonald's drive-thru's are perfectly legal. I want to get help, but at the same time it feels so good. Chocolately goodness mixed with smooth vanilla flavor sliding down my parched, dry, overheated throat. Ebony and Ivory... it's like it was meant to be. Maybe someday someone will do an intervention and get me into a twelve-step program to break this cruel, destructive, terrifying, yet insanely delicious addiction.
In the meantime, I think I'll go lick the bowl.
I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too! | | |
| I made a New Year's resolution to stop making New Year's resolutions a long time ago.
Needless to say, it's the only one I've kept. | | |
| Yes, yes, a thousand times YES!! Let's also give them free access to cigarettes so they can have
that highly relaxing "post-conjugal smoke." We should instruct them in class on the proper method of smoking them so they don't accidentally light them on the wrong end.
While we're at it, let's give them
free access to a wide assortment of firearms so they can go on that
shooting spree they've been planning for months. We should
supply the rubber bullets, beanbags, or perhaps
blanks (all free of charge, of course) so they can go on that rampage without killing anyone.
Also, clean needles for every child. After all, safety is important when it comes to the inevitable middle school drug habit. We wouldn't want any nasty diseases floating around out there to mess up the fun.
Then,
after the drinking binge, which almost always accompanies shooting up
(I'm talking about the drugs AND the school), we should call cabs for them so they don't
kill anyone while driving under the influence. Cabbies should provide this service free of charge. There's nothing worse
than a drunk seventh-grader (who's also high) getting a DUI when it could so easily be prevented.
They're going to do all this stuff anyway. The most loving thing we as adults can do is to make sure they self-destruct in the safest manner possible.
I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too! | | |
| Currently reading:
My Utmost for His Highest
Oswald Chambers
Day 4
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Just in case anyone's wondering... I didn't forget my password.
I have a few moments to spare... thought I'd share...
The wife's CD project is about complete. It's amazing how far this has come. What began as a mere idea has turned into a product with all original work on it. I'm so proud of my wife; in about a week, we'll have a pressed disc (with graphics!) in our hot little hands to gaze at in wonder and amazement.
It's been a learning experience. The biggest lesson is that it pays to shop around, and that it's a good thing to mention that it's a charity project. Extra discounts. Because of this project, we both know a lot more about what goes into making a CD, especially on the duplication side. So many choices which affect price... it's usually a good idea to have your graphics done (or have some idea of what they'll look like) because color determines price. Take a look on the graphics on any given disc... a lot of times you'll see only one or two colors (silver doesn't count).
The discs should be ready by the time the benefit concert rolls around. We had 1000 discs made for this project; after we've given away the obligatory ones (band members, people helping with the benefit, other volunteers, etc.) hopefully the rest will all sell.
It's been an exciting time. I never thought I would see a completed CD ready to sell at a benefit. Major kudos to the wife for seeing this project to completion. She has a tenacity that I don't often see anywhere else. She will get something done no matter what it takes.
I will admit, we went into this project expecting a lot more help from the church. We didn't get a whole lot. That's a good thing, because we wouldn't have fully appreciated what goes into this sort of thing, and we wouldn't have made the contacts needed to get this done.
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| Currently reading:Acts 24:1-91 Peter 2:11-16Proverbs 28:12-13___________________________________________________
Before you read this post, please be aware that there will be an extreme level of honesty in my thoughts today. This isn't meant to hurt anyone (especially the wife); rather, I want to document what God has shown me today. Read at your own risk.
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The human heart is an ugly thing. Liberals like to believe that all people are basically good (except for Christians & Jews of course) and that bad behavior can be explained away by some traumatic childhood experience.
We're not intrinsically good. We were born into evil and sometimes that nature rears its ugly head. I received a reminder of this at an audition with the band tonight.
There were two singers trying out. My wife was one of them. I know she reads my blog from time to time, so hopefully she will read this post in its entirety before rendering judgment.
My wife isn't the best singer in the world, but she works hard and practices a lot. Sometimes it's hard for me to listen because I have heard better singers and I've been playing music for a long time. Unfortunately, her audition didn't go so well. She was nervous and it showed... big time. She used one of her originals for the audition, and I don't think she even made it through the whole thing. She kept saying how this wasn't a good audition, and she made some comments that I make faces whenever she sings and plays the guitar at the house. That hurt. I don't know that I make faces, but I have expressed displeasure in more subtle ways.
I will admit that sometimes when we practice together it grates on me because she hasn't developed her talent to the level where she's comfortable with entrances. Usually that's the worst part. I could handle it if she just knew where to come in. Once she learns how to make an entrance, I think about 80% of my frustration would dissipate.
But this post isn't about how she's not a perfect singer; this is about how I treat her. And I'm ashamed of how I've treated her lately when it comes to music.
When she auditioned for the band, yeah, she gave less than a stellar performance, but the other guys saw past the howling coyotes (editor's note: Will, your humor sucks) and gave her some real encouragement. They liked her song and heard what she meant it to sound like.
I felt really bad because of the comments she made about me during the audition and the contrast between the way the guys encouraged her and the way I've treated her. I'll be honest: I don't like practicing with her a lot of the time. But this is something I need to deal with. I need to learn how to see her potential and to encourage her on toward the goal of good musicianship without being a royal S.O.B.
She's been having a hard time practicing with me as well. She knows that I have been less than stellar in my performance attitude-wise during practice. She wants to know just what it is that's bothering me, but how do you tell your wife that she could use some improvement musically?
This is no excuse for my attitude. I've treated her in such a way that she winds up being frustrated and discouraged, and I'm afraid that she didn't perform up to her potential tonight because all I've done is drop hints that she's not up to my standard of musicality.
The ugliness I see in me is that I don't often see past the mistakes and the mess-ups of lesser developed artists. It's hard for me to encourage someone in their gifting (provided they actually have one in this field of endeavor) when they're not mature in it.
All I see are the faults, and those faults frustrate me. What the guys saw tonight is potential. They were very positive and encouraging. I was negative and hard to practice with. Sometimes the best way to see the ugly truth about yourself is for God to show it to you in His own inimitable way. When I saw that truth for myself tonight, all the defensiveness was stripped away and I saw my attitude for what it really was: prideful and arrogant.
I've been called "arrogant" by a grand total of two people so far. There are many, many more people that know me and have come and gone in my life. I may have had personality conflicts with a few, but I haven't heard anything like that sort of judgment call from anyone else, so I think it's a pretty safe bet that I don't really come across that way to the general population. Of course, there are two people who would probably disagree with me on this one, but they really didn't bother to get to know me that well before making their comments.
That doesn't mean the arrogance isn't there. It is a sort of musical arrogance or snobbiness that manifests itself in a bad way toward my wife. I want to rid myself of these flaws and to see her the way others see her musically. The neighbor put it best: she has a strong voice and has talent, but she just needs to develop it more.
Is that to say there isn't genuinely bad music out there? There are a lot of subjective judgments that people make when it comes to musical style, which is a matter of taste and opinion, but at some level most people can agree as to what constitutes good music and good musicianship. In the same way that we look at a house and determine if it was well-built, we can listen to music and determine whether it's good music or not.
What I need to work on is encouraging my wife and others in their musical talents and to see what could be rather than what is. Hopefully I can temper that with the ability to gently steer others away from music if they're talent honestly doesn't lie there.
Wife, if you've read this far, please absorb what I have to say: you have musical talent. It needs to be nurtured and developed, and I want to be part of that constructive process. You have excellent songwriting abilities -- abilities I wish I had. You use chord progressions I would never have thought of. They're a little quirky, but they form a really good basis for some good-sounding music. I apologize for the way I've acted during our practices. You need me to encourage you musically, not be caught up in some sort of stupid superiority complex. I seek your forgiveness. With all my heart.
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