Quick post before bed

Hey, I'll probably regret this when I wake up in the morning, but hey...

Wow, what a week it's been. Well, not really. Feels like it, tho... maybe just too many late nights.

I got Advent Children this week! :) Yeah, so I almost fell in love with Aerith all over again... "dilly dally shilly shally" became my life's philosophy... but I think my heart's settled down a bit now. Let me talk about Dilly Dally Shilly Shally. Amazing the stir it's caused on the internet. Some people just don't get it, but I think it's brilliant. Cloud is so lost in his perceived guilt to the point where he cuts himself off from his friends, and just clings to that memory of Aerith, and how he blames himself for his death... and then she says: "Dilly dally shilly shally. Isn't it time you did the forgiving?" In other words, Cloud, get over it, stop angsting, forgive yourself and move on. I can't help but entertain the thought that maybe sometimes God would say dilly dally shilly shally to us. Or at least to me. Gosh I angst a lot. But I'm not gonna start angsting about angsting. =)

I just think that really captures Aerith's free spirit so well.

I also saw Mission Impossible 3 tonight! I thought it was brilliant! I wanna be a secret agent when I grow up. I have dreams about stuff like that, where I'm running away from people shooting at me, or driving away a lot of the time. I hope they make a really good game of it or something... I reckon it'd be awesome to have a game, like Splinter Cell or Metal Gear, except you control a whole team or squad of 4 or something... or maybe a multi-player game... that would be heaps cool...

It's midnight. Good night - laterz. =)

PS There's a nice picture of me that I took tonight. =)

Goodnight Monsterland...

Pooh!

I got up to ... I think Round 10 on WBIML... and I died!! That's the sucky thing about old video games, you don't have saves... these days, we gamers have become soft, due to the wonderous invention of the MEMORY CARD. =) Video games are just too easy these days.

The gig went... well, okay. I was a little bit down tonight, not quite sure why. I think I'm just tired. But everyone there seemed happy with the sound, so that's good. =) We both made a few little mistakes, but meh, who cares? We got $90 each. Sweet. The thing that really bummed me out was it was sooo hard to hear each other. Em was having trouble hearing me, I was having trouble hearing her, and we were right next to the kitchen, which is like open to the whole dining room... so it's very noisy! And of course, people were talking, which is fair enough, considering you're doing background music...

That just reminded me of this one time when I had to play piano at some stupid school concert... and the audience talked right thru my performance. Man that sucked. Maybe that's why I found it hard tonight. I guess I'm not used to playing to an un-captive audience.

Sooooo tired. Going to bed now. Holy crap, it's quarter to midnight. Sleeeeeep... ahh... bliss...

Love you all,
goodnight!!
the gregglesaurus

Date with Destiny...

Quick post before bed...

Thankyou to all those who have been reading my blog. I don't know who you are because none of you have left comments. Except for Megan... thanks.

Anyway! I have some exciting news! This week, I really got freed from a lot of crap that has been holding me down for sooooo long. I won't go into details, but let's just say God is good... much gooder than I thought. Here's my theory on God. No matter how good you perceive him to be, he's really better.

It has been an extremely busy week. 7am shift at work, music practice on Monday night, "dream team" meeting on Tuesday night, practice with Em and Connect on Wednesday night, practice with Em and Destiny wedding band practice on Thursday night, youth on Friday night, and today, 2 church news ads, washing (which is still on the line, I'll probably get it off on Tuesday), a MAMMOTH practice with Em for tomorrow night and some running around to get a mother's day gift with Andrew (my brother).

Yes, tomorrow night is my first date with destiny!! I am very excited about my gig with Emily, we have 30 songs... well, we cut two, so 28... gosh, she's got an amazing voice... and we had so much fun practicing tonight, for five freaking hours! which included a well-earned and much-needed macca's run. I love my Hello Kitty hairstyle ... thing!

So I'll let you all know how tomorrow night goes... but I think it's gonna rock.

Sarahanne - if you're reading this: good luck! You are a super-talented girl, and you have a great voice! Go for it, sistah!

Happy note: I found Wonderboy in Monsterland at the Old Lolly Factory in town! Got it for $5! Yesssssssss!

continued...

Sometimes I feel like a sanguine. Sometimes I feel totally introverted and shy. I've recentlly noticed a common factor... in those times when I feel like God is far away and I feel seperated from him (whether real or not, I don't know) that's when I really withdraw and kinda shut down... but when I don't really think about it that much, and I feel like everythings at least ok with God... well, I'm more outgoing and confident... I could almost say extroverted. Something I've been pondering lately. Am I really an introvert or an extrovert? Am I just ... who God made me, perhaps??

Oh yeah... also...

Well, I thought since I'm up I should probably post some quick news too...

I went to the dentist yesterday, and got my teeth 'cleaned'. Got rid off all that crap on my teeth I was telling you about before... tell you what?? It feels awful now! My bottom teeth were all smooth from that 'calculus' on the back, and now they're all ridged... and that's the way they're meant to be! Not very comfortable. Well, not very nice feeling, anyway.

Umm...

So yeah, I mentioned this thing about music at a restaurant! Yeah, Ann-Marie managed to get a whole heap of us involved in this thing with a restaurant in Wallsend called Destiny's... and so, we're going to be the in-house band for weddings and other functions and stuff, which is very exciting - even though the rest of the band wants to do a gig without me... hehe... um, but on Mother's Day, I'm doing a gig with a girl named Emily (I won't say her last name for her protection) - whose voice absolutely ROCKS. Heck yes. I'm kinda blown away? honoured? touched? that I get to work with someone so talented. But heck, it's not her - it's just the gift that God has given her, so yeah... don't get a big head, Em. :p if you're reading this that is. Nah, seriously, it'll be a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to it.

Oh wow! I'm listening to Spread Your Wings on this Queen concert (see previous posts) and they just went into double time at the end! How cool!!

Well, I have much more to share... but... I'll just share this one last personal thought that I've been thinking about lately (and back into half time! Nice! Weird thing is, Freddie seems to be singing in his higher range in some of these live tracks - why did he always sing low when he was performing live???)

MP3 legality blues... part 2

(But I don't really feel bad about videotaping stuff off TV, or speeding for that matter... well, actually, I do feel a slight little poke when I'm speeding... but I certainly don't feel like it's cutting me off from God...)

But here's a thought... the more I look in to it, this whole RIAA thing (or whatever they call themselves) seem to be really ... well, bad. Trying to control the whole music industry and everything... and I read that some artists are actually not against file sharing, and are actually trying to stop the RIAA from making it illegal, in particular in Canada. I mean... $1.69 for a digital download... I think that's a bit of a rip-off, really, considering that you can probably buy a lot of this music from a second hand store for even less than that. They make you pay about $18 for an album, which is about the same you'd pay at K-mart for a top 40 cd. I know a second hand shop where you can buy stacks of used cd's for $8, with no reduction in quality. (So, why can't they make digital downloads cheaper? Second hand mp3's... how does that work?) What are you paying for when you purchase an album? The physical media or the music? If it's the physical media, then why were CD's more expensive than cassettes by $10? Because CD's were better quality. But the actual medium... well, you'll probably find that it's cheaper to buy blank cd's than casettes! Hah!

Now... what is more unethical? Charging this much money for digital downloads?? Or downloading it free? Which is the lesser of two evils?? The bible says a lot about injustice and extortion, too... but it does also say render unto Caesar what is Caesars...

By the way - taping songs off the radio? That's illegal too! Illegal illegal illegal! Everything is bloody illegal!!

Anyway, sorry if this is all over the place, it's just my thoughts as they come out. I'd be interested to know yours... meanwhile, I better get to bed... it's 12.06am on Friday morning...

MP3 legality blues... part 1

Grrr...

I hate this!

I have a very sensitive conscience, almost to a fault. And I've been feeling ... convicted? ... about downloading mp3's from limewire, only for the purpose of learning songs for this stuff at the restaurant. I didn't really wanna pay $1.69 a track from itunes for legal downloads, especially when it wasn't really for just entertainment purposes, but learning the songs... So, the past few days, I've sorta been having this inner battle with my bulldog of a conscience about the whole thing... to the point where I wake up every morning feeling AWFUL.

Does anyone else struggle with this sorta thing? I mean, it bugs me, because most people I know don't have any problem with downloading mp3's off the net.

Anyway, I'm sort of at a point at the moment where ... well, I don't feel like I have to delete all the mp3's I've downloaded. See, I wouldn't feel right about downloading for free music for my own enjoyment... if it's really good music, I want to see that the artist's get what is due them. Especially since I have aspirations of being a recording artist one day...

Anyways, a friend of mine told me about this website called allofmp3.com, which is a russian website that offers 'legal' downloads for as cheap as 2c a track. I just downloaded some rare Queen concert in Japan for about $2US. Pretty good, huh? Apparently, there's some loophole in the Russian laws that make digital media sharing legal or something... but I'm not sure if it's legal to download from another country. So yeah, but I'm going ahead and doing it anyway... for now.

Thing is, did you know it's illegal (apparently) to video tape programs off TV? Crazy, huh?? It's even illegal to re-use photographs downloaded from the internet!! Copyright laws are so stupid! But because I have a very sensitive conscience, I feel like I have to abide by them, in order to be in right standing with God. In a nutshell - I feel like I'm cutting myself off from God by posessing illegally downloaded mp3's. I feel like it's putting a block in my relationship with him. Is this silly? Is it just me...? but then the Bible does say if you do something against your conscience, then for you, it is sin. So? I'm screwed!

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