The Rampant Id

I need new pants.

[therampantid]

Living for everyone else

I'm just at a loss of hope. My existence is merely to provide for people and I have no more personal enjoyment in my work. I get numb everyday and the hours pass, but I feel less joy everyday. I fear that I'm squandering a talent I don't even really know exist. Maybe I'm just a talentless hack who just daydreams about a life he will never have. I'm irritable everyday and I stopped caring the words coming out of other people's mouths. It's just noise at this point. I don't know what I'm going to do. Sitting here at a stool at the walking track and hoping the building collapses around me so I don't have to feel this way anymore. Fuck.

[therampantid]

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[therampantid]

What Are You Trying to Prove?

Back in the day, whenever I was up to my usual antics of being a fucking weirdo, my mum would often comment to me, “What are you trying to prove?”  As in, by doing whatever I was doing, who was I trying to impress?

Well, my conversation with Mary Jane came up with some interesting thoughts that might be worth mentioning.  That has to be the question that we should always ask of ourselves.  What our driving force is, how to maintain momentum or ease into a slower pace, a slightly out of reach goal that keeps us sane whilst waking up at 6 every morning and finally finding your free time between the hours of 8:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.  

You live your live everyday and you can choose to be hamster that lives in its cage until its final twitch, or you can be the rogue rodent that makes it out of the cage, and risk the freedom of a front yard, or the harsh reality of a Firestone.  Or just be the hamster who yearns for something more than food and the fascinating shutter effect that is probably the rudimentary idea behind “motion pictures” when he’s getting fit.  No, this hamster is aware that there is perhaps a better world out there, but food is constant, there’s shelter, nobody’s trying to swallow it, and there was only a strange incident whereas it had the freedom to roam, but only within the confines of the owner’s naked body.  

Trying to prove to your spouse you’re good enough, trying to earn that father of the year cup you just received for Christmas, trying to prove to your mother that moving to a new country for a fresh start was the best decision she’s ever made for your life...  there are millions of variations of what you’re trying to prove and to whom.  Even without the co-dependence that is implied, you may just be trying to prove that you’re brave enough - with the minimal strength to be able to get your ass over to that girl over there, and just smile and say hi.  Without the boner this time, preferably.

So if you find yourself in a looping dump, with nothing to live for, cancel that Uber call to the bridge.  Try to prove someone wrong.

[therampantid]

Spotify vs. Google Music

The whole reason why I even considered dropping Spotify to Google Music was the tremendous appeal of YouTube Red.  Which is basically YouTube without the barrage of ads.  I was sitting on the fence about the family plan since the family does listen to my music, but lack any of the compulsiveness and hoarding nature of earmarking every song I like.  But I decided to make the switch nonetheless because the primary reason why I don’t YouTube much are indeed the ads that plague my watching experience.  I used to gauge how much I wanted to watch the clip vs. having to sit through a 30 second ad.  Now I don’t.  But now I have to deal with Google Music.

So the fundamental difference between Spotify and Google Music is that Spotify is essentially for music lovers.  They have curated and user playlists, with lots of avenues for discovering new music and rediscovering alternative great songs that never hit the radio.  Spotify has seriously given me so much exposure to songs that I would never usually give any attention to, just by fitting it into a playlist of other songs that I do listen to.  Google have curated playlists as well, but my limited experience with them has been lukewarm.  They’re your standard playlist that lacks a heartbeat.  Given that, they are almost essentially the same music streaming site, right?

Well, depends if you like your music offline.  

See, both services offer offline music for when you’re out and about and don’t feel like racking up mobile charges for streaming music, or when you have spotty wifi and would like to ignore the buffering issue that keeps your song from being interrupted when other family members are streaming their media as well.  But Spotify has that offline music beat.  They offer different qualities of audio to be download, and I used to store the 3333 song limit on my device, which capped out about 10.3 gigs, give or take.  Google too has an offline feature, but like their other playlists, cripple the user to only have about a thousand songs on their device.  I tried downloading the 1,000 song playlist and a compromise and realized that it would be somewhere to the effect of 7 gigs. Which is ridiculous considering it’s a third of the size.  

About the 1000 song playlist.  It’s stupid.  There simply isn’t a way for you to keep all your favorite songs on one list.  Not in your library, not as a thumbs up.  No, I had to divide and manually enter each of my 5,800 plus songs into five different playlists on Google.  That blows.  Now I have to develop some system so that songs don’t duplicate across 5 playlists and only really shuffle 1000 songs at a time.

Don’t laugh at my first world problem.

[therampantid]

New Year’s Eve

Between the Christmas activities and all the visiting, I”m glad New Year’s Eve is a much quieter affair with nary a relative to visit.  I’m cool with that.  So it’ll just be the four of us, sipping cider and watching the next installment of Bond - I think “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” is the next one, and it’ll just be a nice and easy evening with the family.