There was a time in my life when I was a hardcore atheist. But this guy makes too much sense to deny. Born again? No thanks, I’ll grow up.

I don’t understand why movie studios cant turn video games into movies just like this. I still haven’t forgotten how bad they effed up the Mario Bros movie.

Auto-Tune is a phase-vocoder used to correct pitch, more commonly seen used by the R&B artist, T-Pain. Leave it to the internet to produce obscure uses of the software. This song is actually well-done and the more I listen to it the more I applaud Dr. King’s daring to dream. We’ve come a long way, and even though we have a long way to go, it’s awesome to be alive in a time where things are coming together.

Chromeo - Fancy Footwork

Chromeo is a real electro-funk-jazzy treat. What draws me to them is there ability to come off as sexy with the perfect blend of sarcasm and sincerity. It reminds me of being on the same level with someone you love and you playfully telling them something cheesy or cliche. And even though what your saying is lame, you both know you mean it and the point is made anyway. The deep grooves of this album definitely deserve to be played over quality speakers at high volume. It kind of jiggles you in the right places.

Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours

For no apparent reason I wrote this band off for the longest time. Then one day I ended up at one of their shows and had the pleasure of witnessing this amazing album live. This is seriously one of my favorite albums of all time. All of the songs have a catchy, poppy feel to them, but at the same time the ambient backgrounds keep you interested. Definitely check out the track Lights and Music. It was the lady killer in the indie clubs last summer. Their song Far Away is ruling my life at the moment. If you’re craving some synth action, look no further.

Digitalism - Idealism

Digitalism is exactly what you’d expect from a band of that name. Seeing them live only increased my interest in how they layer all of the digital sounds. Their setup made you think you were aboard the Nebuchadnezzar, from the Matrix, and at any moment the robot apocalypse was going to take place. The album is a mix of instrumental/sampled songs and vocal songs. I really love the vocal songs and feel that more of them are necessary. This album really satisfies my inner nerd. If you get the chance to see them, you should make it happen.

Justice - Cross

A lot of people don’t know that they’ve heard this band before. Their song Genesis was featured in a Cadillac commercial, and hence forth, they’ve had a special little place in my heart. In addition to putting out a great album, their music videos for D.A.N.C.E and DVNO are nothing short of awesome. The album does a good job of keeping your blood pumping, allowing you to dance your way to dawn. Watching the sun rise while sweaty and tired before crashing hard is something everyone should experience.

MGMT - Oracular Spectacular

MGMT is another one of the crowd-pleasers. Their songs all exude a feel-good, pick-me-up attitude. Their album is great for gathering your friends on a hot day, jumping in a car, and driving toward water and/or roller coasters. Make sure you check out their fan-made video for Kids, which became so popular among fans, the band has pretty much adopted it as their official video. In fact, the fans responsible for the video make an appearance in the official video for Electric Feel. Be sure to add this album to your road trip check list for the summer.

If you haven’t heard any of these albums, I hope you find something you like here. If you happen to find 5 amazing albums, then you can consider yourself awesome. If you think all of this is total crap, well then you are wrong, because what I like is gospel. I know this because Jesus and I rock out on the regular to this stuff when hes not trying to force his love for death metal upon me. Cradle of Filth just isn’t my thing and of all people, you’d think He would respect my beliefs. I hope to share music I come across more often, so please feel free to send me anything you like or think I’d like. Just don’t bother sending me any Miley Cyrus because I’m already in love with that shit, too ;)

Pretty cute video about a guy and his religious cat.

Last year, I met a girl through some friends. Long story short we got to know each other, started dating, and fell in love. Everything was going just perfect right up until about April. People that know me know that I am a happy person. It takes a lot for me to become depressed. And when I say a lot I mean like traumatic shit. Otherwise, I have a “go with the flow” sort of attitude. Now here’s where the problem begins. I got my wisdom teeth taken out and I kind of let myself down because I really was expecting to just wake up a day or two later and be back to normal. Unfortunately, for two weeks I couldn’t open my mouth wide enough to spoon food in, let alone chew anything. Almost a month later, I still can not eat normally. Now couple that with helping her relocate, living with her and my brother, the rest of life’s daily stresses, I quickly fell into a depressed state. That might not have been such a huge deal, had I fully known what was going on with me.

So being depressed, my sleeping increased significantly. I already don’t have the best sleeping habits, so it became much worse. Of course I became more irritable and cranky. No matter how much you love someone, it just happens to be the people closest to you that are affected by this state. Not even fully understanding my situation, I told my girlfriend that I wasn’t happy. I didn’t even know why, I just knew my body was feeling funky. And never dealing with such a seemingly random case of depression, it never even crossed my mind. Like I said, I’m the happy guy. I don’t just get depressed. Or so I thought. So the week goes on and things degrade, and we still don’t really know whats going on. Is one of us getting tired of the other?

After such a stressful week, the awesome girl that she is, suggest we get away sometime together and do something adventurous. I thought, “hey, why not tonight?” It was a Friday. I thought we could just go and come back Sunday with a fresh start from a relaxing romantic getaway. When I get home we start planning things out but the stress catches up and my head begins to throb. Basically I lay down, and this bothers her. Given my recent behavior, this is completely understandable. I tell her I’d get up if it really means that much to her but explain I have a genuine pain. At this point, shes upset and assures me it doesn’t matter. Naturally I fall asleep.

I wake up hours later and she is in the bed. I go in there asking about the trip and she tells me she doesn’t want to go. And this one of the things I regret the most. With everything that happened over the past week or two, I just snap. I tell her, “I’m done with this,” and that, “I’m over it.” I even do the whole Facebook status change. At that point in time, I was done. I’m not the type of person to threaten things like that for the sake of it. But keep in mind already being depressed, we were just feeding off of each others anger. It became a vicious cycle of me doing something out of fear, then trying to apologize for it and make up for it, but her not accepting it right away because she was still genuinely hurt. With that, things got insanely worse.

It got to the point where she was staying with friends and I was sure she was going to leave me. I don’t even recall her saying she wanted a little time to work it out at this point, I just knew she was mad. The little pussy I was being was like well then why am I holding your stuff? We agreed I would give her time to find a place and in the meantime we wouldn’t talk. A day or two goes by and she messages me and we have a short conversation about nothing really important. I go home and become really depressed realizing I’m very much still in love with this girl. This is the point where I realize I was severely depressed. I text her begging to just listen and get some things of my chest. She refuses to talk and the vicious cycle starts up again. I think to myself, she should know after two hours of begging this is probably pretty serious. She continues to say no and I just get to a certain point and I basically tell her if that’s how she is going to treat me then I am putting her shit out. I’m not sure if that’s necessarily an ultimatum but I just figured it was a final plea for help. And I see now how our mutual stubbornness did not help. Of course she didn’t think, “oh poor boy, maybe he does need my help.” Understandably, she replied with something along the lines of, “wow, you’re a crazy asshole.”

Needless to say, this results in her stuff being outside. It rained that evening. That night her and her friend come by to move her stuff and again, I have cooled down by this point. Its late and I tell them to just take what they can and come back tomorrow instead of making multiple trips throughout the night, and that I’d move the rest back in. No matter what I do, she is past any point of forgiveness. I don’t blame her. I agree I was acting fucking crazy. There was one final moment of shit when they came back to get her stuff. She was separating our stuff in the kitchen and just started throwing my shit under the sink. I asked her friend to ask her to clean up before she left. Then I asked her directly. Now I should not have done this, but when she ignored me, I threw the box of her stuff I was holding. I didn’t even know what was in it, but it made a pretty dramatic crash. She slapped me a couple times, called me crazy, and even pulled out the, “I wish you were dead,” card.

I’ve replayed the whole ordeal in my head a million times, and every time I’m torn apart. This is not how our relationship was. We were madly in love, going on adventures, doing cute random things for each other. Unfortunately the depression set us back quite a bit. I think the main downfall is that we did not identify my depression correctly and neither one of us know what do to with someone in that sate. I’m being optimistic by saying it set us back instead of killing us, but I don’t want it to be over. She kind of hints at it having a chance after she thinks about, but it’s still not clear to me. Not being able to talk to her, I have resorted to writing her love letters and talking to close friends about what happened. She still seems kind of grudgey about the whole situation, but I’m making it a point to stop this vicious cycle. I understand I’ve put her through the worst shit she’s ever been in. I just want her to know that is not me. I’m not asking her to forget it happened. I know I will never forget it. But I do hope she forgives me. That’s one of the things I admire about her the most. Her ability to forgive people that have done her wrong. It’s unsettling to think I might be one of the only people she just doesn’t forgive.

Now there is still a scared part of me thinking that she has already moved on. I mean, she is a beautiful, fun girl so I know there are guys lined up waiting to have a chance at making her happy. I can tell you though, with certainty, I have no motives other than her complete happiness in mind. I love this girl for all that she is. But during this time of limbo, what should I do? Continue to tell this girl how much I love her until she’s ready to accept me and let me back into her life or play it safe by getting over the whole love deal and come back when she’s ready? I already told her I have my entire life to make up for it, and I intend on doing just that, but is that being unrealistic? At what point does it become that?

I urge anyone to give me advice on this situation, and I wish she could read this and let me know if there’s anything that I just see completely different from her, or if there is anything left out. I want to give her the time shes asked for and I promised to give, but I also feel there should be some sort of compromise. I mean, just a little glimpse of hope would do a lot for my appetite right now. I’d honestly like to know if that is asking too much. In the end I want show her I’m capable of providing unconditional love. Either way, it’s another lesson in life I’ve learned the hard way.

Candi, I love you.

Very well made video by Dave Sowerby with the song The Funeral by Band of Horses. Dark-magic-on-a-bike by Danny “Mac-Ass” MacAskill. Well I can’t verify anyone actually calls him “Mac-Ass” other than me, but if not, it’ll happen soon.

Now for some reason I have never tried to learn from the video. Maybe its the bright colors and the zany Japanese commentary, but it wasn’t until I saw the english version that I attempted this feat myself.

Turns out, it’s amazingly easy and folded all of my laundry including re-folding the rest of my clothes with little effort. I must admit my folds are nowhere near as perfect as the ones in the videos, but I refuse to iron each t-shirt. Maybe with a little practice I’ll get a little closer. Enjoy!

Now that the blog is back up I am proud to show off the new, clean layout. My favorite part is that the XHTML and CSS both validate! Check out the new links in the footer. I still have to go back through old posts and tighten them up a bit but I’ve been meaning to do a little post-related spring cleaning anyway. Getting everything to validate was no easy feat, either. I’ll be posting some tutorials on how to do so pretty soon.

I still have a few other things on my plate before I feel I can put as much effort toward this blog as I want to, but it’s definitely getting there. While I clean up older posts I’ll try to backdate a few posts of events I have pictures of. If you check my Flickr you can see I’ve been pretty neglectful there, too. Hopefully that will all be changing soon!

The BYT election party was THE party to be at. This was such an amazing time on an epicly historical night.

Official BYT article here.

Good things are coming.