Feel the Love

     I just finished listening to the Joe Rogan Experience podcast which had Kevin Smith guest starring. For those who don't know, I have semi-close family relations with Kevin, not close enough however to where it's really anything like we see each other often. We've only talked a handful of times. Anyway, they talked about very interesting concepts about human physiology and the effects of drugs on people and other things like concepts of philosophy and the future and lost and forgotten pasts of Humanity. So I'm feeling very creatively inspired. I must take advantage of this. Let's channel that with the good stuff that's been happening lately into a nice little blog, shall we?

     I feeling good right now. Lots of good things have come since that awful final the other day. My grade came in for it... A 29/50, BUT I did manage to pass to class, so all remains well. I've just decorated my room and family room with some colorful xmas lights and even turned our rubber ficus into an awesome rainbow xmas tree (not to mention I broke a sweat putting up all the lights, so it's helping my weight loss as well, albeit only a tiny bit). 

     Thanks to a friend at the Child's Play Auction dinner, I was able to purchase a one-of-a-kind piece of concept art from Halo 4, and it's signed by Sparth no less! If you watch the Halo 4 concept art trailer, it's the one with the UNSC ships dropping into the mysterious Forerunner world. I can't thank my friend enough because yet again she has come through for me in so many more ways than she has to, mostly because she doesn't have to at all. She cares for the fans, and that's such a great thing to know. To know that the fans are cared about so much only makes me trust those in charge of it all even more. If you're reading, you're the best. Now onto more happiness, yes?

     I was out getting gas earlier on just before going to buy the lights and while I was standing there next to my car, I could here this girl talking to someone or something. She sounded so happy. There was a car waiting behind me because there were no open pumps. I couldn't help but make charismatically confused faces to the girl for his amusement. I don't know if he ever saw, but I hope he did and thought to himself, "hah, that guy can make some good faces." Anyway, while I stood next to my car, she suddenly hops out from behind my car and we make eye contact. "Oh!," I think to myself. She is very, very, VERY pretty and cute. Imagine Olivia Munn with less freckles and longer hair. She was also wearing a hippy-ish sun dress. Oh, she knows what I like. Obviously a free-spirited type who thinks more openly than most and has awesome and interesting tastes and music and cool concepts to talk about and neat stuff to go do. And she probably goes for more unconventional looking guys like myself because she's an adventurous woman. I make a brief smile, which clearly paled in comparison to her naturally lit up face, already smiling. She continues walking with an obvious spring in her step. She takes her eyes off me and looks ahead as she walks toward the small booth to pay.

     A guy is in front of her paying for his gas. Good, this way I can still watch her. Do I talk to her? I don't generally do that unless I'm on adderall. I remain standing, contemplating complementing her in some way that will start a conversation. She bends over slightly, throwing her hair forward and then back running her fingers through its waves. She gives an audible happy sigh of relief. The guy in front of her finally walks away and she steps up to the booth. "Hello," she exclaims to the guy in the booth, whom I can only imagine is miserable because his day is stuck out in a tiny booth while it's 30 degrees out and he's surrounded by candy that constantly tempts him as he hears their whispers in the back of his head. And then finally, at night, with no sun to even remotely warm him, when all seems lost to him in this life, this girl comes to his booth. A human embodiment of the sun itself. He should feel like he's come into contact with that which he can only describe as god, changing his life forever, knowing that despite the constant shit storm that surrounds him, there is still some sort of hope out there, moving around the world spreading the natural joy that emanates from her very presence. A single person that can change the world. This guy should feel what I feel right now.

     ....but he doesn't change his manner at all. He continues to sit there, almost motionless, as stoic as a rock. She gets her change and begins moving back in my direction. The man in the booth will remain their for the rest of his days; dying alone in the cold, because he didn't take advantage of the opportunity which is now walking away from him. Will I be different? Her eyes are already upon me as I stare almost blankly. She looks down for the briefest of moments, but as if in slow motion, her head raises, eyes on me, instantly seductive, a lock of hair falls over her right eye and she brushes it back. I try my best to smile even harder, not like a crazy person, no teeth showing, but enough to actually see a smile. I can't say anything though. Why? Why can't I say something like, "I like your dress and your hair and every bit about you from even the slightest of glances." As if it was an echo, she turned her head forward again and walked off, back towards her car. Now I was being left with the man in the booth. Neither of us would ever get this opportunity again. My eyes never leave her though as she trots back to her car. I should go over there. Yes. But my legs aren't moving. What the fuck was I doing?? The gas pump stops. I begin putting it back on the thing and close my gas tank, remembering the old man in the giant red pickup still patiently waiting behind me. I have to get in my car. Maybe I'll just pull around... But that seems so creepy and perverted somehow. Too many movies... It's done. I start my car and begin pulling forward. I can only imagine her watching my car as I pulled away from her...

     The thought of turning around remains, constantly trying to be reasoned out. I pull out onto the street, all hope of anything ever happening with this girl is slipping away, and evidently at my own hand. I pull into Lowes, where I wanted to get xmas lights for my room and our family room window and rubber ficus. We had been discussing it for a couple weeks and I wanted to take this opportunity of creativeness to my advantage. I ran in and got a couple boxes of 150-light stands of multi-color and practically run out of their as I check out. I'm going back. I can only hope that this girl is still there because she is so different from what I see. Everyday I see people who just look miserable with their lives and it bums me the fuck out. People need to be happier with their lives and their situations, and the fact that it's been cloudy and rainy and little snow isn't helping either. To even see someone like this girl, who seems so genuinely happy with her life and time. I need to go back there and meet her. I drive quickly back to the gas station, pull in and look at all the cars that pass, searching to see if she's in one of them. I don't know what I'm going to do when I get there though. What would I say that doesn't sound as creepy as can be? I don't care. I need to say something though, I need to at least try. 

     I'm back at the gas station, frantically search the cars near where she was presumably parked. Nothing. She was gone... My head down in shame, I drove back home. I came back and remedied the loss of the perfect woman by putting up lights in my room and family room. They actually ended up looking really good and I've gotten like five complements already. The more I thought, well, at least I know she exists. I was excited to tell my roommates about her because it was such an awesome experience to see someone like her. 

     My only hope now is that I see her again somewhere because I know if I do, I will say something for sure.

     This is where I'll end for tonight. And again, I apologize to those awaiting my Halo blog, which I think will be in two parts due to the overall length of it. I leave you with Cut Copy's, "Feel the Love." You may remember I mentioned it in my previous blog. It's my favorite song ever. Enjoy.

Until next time...

Lights and Music

     Now, we know how to name, and we know what drives how we choose. So what do I choose? Well, the most prevalent things in my life are school, Halo, and dancing. Let's get the small stuff out of the way first, as they won't be my focus today.

     The fall semester here at SIU is just about over, with finals now on top of the student body. And if you imagined finals as being a person, literally on top of another person (who is the aforementioned student body), then good. That's what I was hoping you'd picture because that's pretty much how it went for me today with my first final. It was an absolute fucking disaster. Where the other 3 tests were at about a 6/10 in difficulty, the final, which was only half cumulative bumped the difficulty way the fuck up to about a 20/10... The proverbial A-Bomb dropped directly on my head... We'll see how my grade ends up soon hopefully. And hopefully the other finals won't be so god damn meticulous. But I digress.

     The Halo subject, however? Well, I got some great news, which has the potential to end even greater, but I won't know that for a couple more hours. I can't say much else at this point however. All I know is that I forever love 343i and the people working there; one in particular, without whom none of my Halo-rific feats would not have been achievable. If they happen to be reading this, I still can't thank you enough for the opportunities you've granted me, and I owe you so much more than you think. <343

     Now, as I feel that the overall subject of Halo would probably end up making a given blog about twice as long as my previous ones, I will leave that for another day, perhaps very soon, perhaps tomorrow? So do not fret, random Halo fan that is reading this in hopes of me telling my stories, including the whole 117 debacle. All your (possibly) burning questions will be answered soon. And I know there's at least a couple of you out there who have requested that I write about it. I will Never Forget. (hah, see what I did there?)

     The primary subject of today's blog is about dancing. Now, before I get into my story, I've always like the movement of dance, especially dances that weren't so structured and choreographed. The free movement of it inspired me. A good example would be pop-n-lock. It just seemed like such free movement that didn't initially seem possible. I would dance in my own time here and there, but it was never something I did actively, and never in front of other people. But that would eventually change.

     Throughout last year (in school year terms), I began gradually changing my taste in music. I would mostly listen to stuff like Dave Matthews Band, who, for a long time, was my favorite music artist. But in general, I would listen to much more contemporary and conventional music. But during that year, I got back into contact with my oldest, and one of my dearest friends, Mike Jehl. At the time, I believe he had been working for my dad's company. Over winter break, Mike and I, and another one of our mutual best friends, Matt Steffen, went out for the first time since the last world cup, when we drove down to St. Louis to visit Mike and enjoy the games. Matt opened my eyes to new musical possibilites. The two most prevalent of which would be Passion Pit and Crystal Castles. Most people know Passion Pit by now, but Crystal Castles remains relatively unknown. They are far on one side of the musical spectrum. Electronic, but much more so than others that we here every now and then. Both artists were I spent most of my time listening to. When we hung out over winter break, it was great. We danced like fools and it was great. They talked about other stuff that they had heard, one in particular: Skrillex. That night, I looked him up and boy, that was awesome. I've since found that I am generally not that into Dubstep, but I can really get into Skrillex.

     That next semester, we kept in contact more than we had in since high school. Towards the end of the school year, Matt put me onto another band: Cut Copy. It was love at first listen. "Feel the Love," was such a new sound to me. Anytime it came on, I had to dance to it. I found out Mike was also going through the same thing, and with the same song. It was such a great summer, listening to such interesting music and dancing with two of my oldest friends. I was moving away from the doing the same thing all the time, which generally entailed my "Every Day" friends coming over, just sitting there watching either Jersey Shore, or god forbid sports, and the occasional bonfire, which after a while, also lost it's luster. It was time for change, and this new music would be the instrument that would lead me there.

     I generally subscribed to Mike and Matt's recommendations, but Cut Copy always remained as the top contender, and still does to this day. I've all but stopped listening to Dave Matthews, and anything else? I can hardly remember what it was that I listened to in the first place. Mike introduced me to the French pop artist, Yelle, whom I adore. Other major artists include Cults, Neon Indian, TV on the Radio, some Deadmau5, Justice, M83, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaur, and most recently, The Ashton Shuffle (which actually was suggested by one of my twitter friends, @42Meaningoflife).

     The more I listen, the more I dance, and the more I dance, I better I get. I am slowly becoming faster and more fluent in my movements. You'll eventually notice, if you haven't already that I really try to stay in the mind set that there really is no correct way to do something or think something. Dancing is a perfect example of this, it's sort of an implied mantra of mine that it doesn't necessarily matter what you do while you dance, just that you dance and love it. Feel the beat and the rhythm and you'll know what to do. Don't place so much into it. I did however, mention above that I am slowly getting better at dancing. Butto say that I am getting "better" would imply an intended goal. And what is that goal? To be able to dance like this:

     That song is by Yelle by the way. The way that these guy's move so quickly and fluid-like absolutely astounds me and it's this type of dancing that I love and aspire to be 'better' in.

     This is the point where I'll cut myself off. I leave you to listen to Cut Copy's awesome and danceable song, "Lights and Music." If you feel the need to dance, don't question it. Just do it and go with what feels best. There's no correct way to dance, as long as you feel the awesome emanating from the movement.

     Oh! and that embarrassment I would feel when dancing when I was younger? That's been gone for a long time now. I dance where ever, when ever, and I couldn't be happier.


Until Next time...

Intro

     Let's begin this day with a quick preface. Last night, I finished my first blog, so late at night, and with the next day looming ever closer. I felt I needed to wrap things up rather quickly and I feel that the ending of "The Naming of Things" to be rather abrupt. In the future I will try to refrain from such circumstances. Let's just call it... The Prologue; the experiment piece; that which would lead to more. This is where we take our first steps.

     Hmm... Now the question is where to step next? Imagine you are a tiny, minuscule, singular point on the surface of a perfect sphere. There is no set direction for you to move, but you feel you must move. How do you choose which direction to go? There is no 'right' or 'wrong.' There is just you, with infinite directions to meander about, forever until the day you can move no longer... This is the position I am in right now with my blog. There is no proof of reason that I can employ that will dictate a path for me to follow.

It's up to me to make this what I will.

     I think that's why I am so suddenly in love with the prospect of blogging. I finished my first blog this morning at about 4:00 AM and I stayed up for another hour, unable to fall asleep, just thinking about what I was going to write next. And even all day today, during any spare time (which there's plenty of), all I could think about was what direction to move in. Oh, the excitement of it. My own thoughts and words, for anyone besides just myself (who is generally my only audience and discussion partner).

     The medieval philosopher, David Hume, talks about how without any sort of passion, making a reasoned decision between two or more things that have no real distinction would be nearly impossible. There was even a case study a few years back about a man who has an abnormality in his brain that pretty much renders him as being solely logical, he had next to no feelings or passions whatsoever. When he was presented with a blue ink pen, and a black ink pen, it was impossible for him to reason out a decision. He sat for hours upon hours, trying to decide which pen to use. And to be honest, I can't remember the outcome of it... One of my philosophy professors presented a similar scenario where we have the same guy, but he's in the cereal isle of a grocery store. Could you imagine it? The choice of which cereal to buy would be impossible for this guy to make...

     Hume is quote as saying, "Reason is the slave to Passion." And after hearing that case study and subsequent reflection of myself, I can completely agree. It disappointed me slightly though, because I have felt for a while that deep passions and subjective beliefs were considerably counter-productive. But ultimately, counter-productive to what? Our society's goals? Our goals are based on our values and our beliefs and our passions. Such a realization to make...

     And yet, here I am; here we are. We sit, still, on this tiny, point, seemingly insignificant against so many other insignificant points. So the path becomes somewhat clearer to us. The road begins to take shape in the fog. I can stay where I am, content with what I have already written, set up shop and call it quits... But that's not the case. There are so many fields I feel I need to cover. So many subjects to observe and unravel. My passions will lead the way.

     In order to do this in what I can only describe as, for lack of a better word, the "correct" way, I feel I must implement some ground rules for myself. To continue on last night's point about naming things, and to connect to today's subject of choice, I feel the criterion for naming each blog should be severely limited; dealing with the subject (obviously), but to make things easier and more time-efficient, I will do my best to pick a song name that relates somehow, and at the end of each blog, I will link that song in some fashion. Now do I map out a set path for myself? Picking out topics far ahead of time?? hmm... I think not. As I said yesterday, that would be spoilerish of me and it takes away the excitement of what I'll write about next, and what you'll (hopefully) be reading.

     So I think this is where I will end for now, seeing as I have my first final tomorrow and I would prefer to get in some last-minute studying in. I'll leave you with M83's, "Intro" from his new album, "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming." (You can listen here: "Intro" by M83)

Until Next time...

"The Naming of Things"

     Where do I begin? It's just after 3:00 AM Central Time, Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 CE, at least that's what it is relative to my position. But I ask again, where do I begin? This is such a free medium that there are literally infinity direction I could take this, and I am only a couple sentences in.

     Conventionally, people tend to greet one another with a short greeting and an introduction to who they are, at least that's what I presume. So my name? Well, that depends on who you talk to. To most (I imagine), I am One One Seven, to fewer, that extends to "Halo Fan of the Decade." I have also been, and continue to be, called Chuck, Chip, Jaqubime, by far fewer people. But generally, I go by my given name, Jake.

     Now, if you don't know me on a personal level, which I imagine most don't, you're possibly reading this wondering more about me: my values, interests, tastes in genre. Essentially, this part is the 'first date' of this blog adventure. But when you go and read a story or watch a movie, does one generally look at the table of contents prior to diving into the actual plot? My guess is that most people know just a tiny bit about what's actually in store for them. Unlike me, most people tend to despise such spoilers, so why would I ruin it for you? There's already plenty of information for readers to ingest then analyze for themselves.

In short, make of me what you will, because chances are that you're going to do it anyway.

     Now, onto more 'initial-blog inquiries... Recently the Blogging bug has struck my closer circles of friends and family. I've always known it was popular amongst society, but it was never a prevalent entity in my life. My brother, Travis has had one for a while, but I never cared enough to read his, let alone anyone's. My sister, Lizz, and friend, Mike Tassi, have both started one and it seems I too have found the prospect of it interesting enough to reason out actually starting one. I think this may be a healthy change for me, at least in some ways. Earlier tonight, or last night (depending on how you view it), I contemplated what subjects I would talk about, how personal I may or may not get, and most importantly, the name in which any and all readers of this particular blog will see before any other writing.

     Naming is a very long and arduous process for me. Like a person with OCD (which is another subject for later reference), the name in which I represent myself is something that needs to be just right. A great example of the naming process is when I used to play World of Warcraft. I had a small stable of characters, most of them level 1s simply because I usually stuck to my main character. But anyway, every character I created had some sort of story in my head, even before their feet touched Azeroth for the first time. Their name was so important, so integral to who and what they were. The more I did it, the more I found the criterion for naming stuff. It needed to be all encompassing of that particular character. It had to be a name that was part of the character's race and culture. I researched lists of names from different websites and would alter it as I would to make it fit better as I saw it.

(This next part is World of Warcraft heavy, so feel free to skip if that's not your cup of tea)
     A fair example would be of my Blood Elf mage, Saelion (Say-lee-yon). The 'ae' and 'ion' were fairly common name parts that were found within the Blood Elf (BE) culture. The BEs were similar to the elves we see in things like Lord of the Rings. They are swift, agile, and graceful as fuck. The name needed to reflect that. It needed to roll off the tongue with said grace. Other such examples were Grunlok (Orc DK), Volkner (Human warrior), Durrim (Dwarf warrior, and my personal favorite because it took so long to figure out his name), Gurujin (Troll Hunter) and Neurion (Blood Elf Paladin). By now, I would hope you got the point so that I didn't have to continue talking further about WoW...

     ANYWAY, the principles remain the same. The name of my blog needed to encompass all that I will eventually talk about, all that I feel I represent and what represents me. A reflection of myself, if you will. Certain aspects I wanted to include were: One One Seven, Philosophy, Observations, Redefining Existence, and so on... The subtitle, which I found later would help yield what is now the title of the blog. I was able to get in what I wanted and now have it in a manner which I feel I will like for a while.

     From the sorts of reactions I have gotten in the past about hearing my process of naming, people generally respond with a resounding, "Holy fuck," or "You think way too much." The ladder of which is relatively true. But perhaps most people don't think enough? Like with most things, there is no correct answer. It's simply a point of view. I suppose I'll end on that, as it is now 3:55 AM and seeing as it's the last couple days of classes before Finals Week, and I have class at 11, I should probably be getting to sleep.

     For those of you actually still reading this now, thank you. Give yourself a pat on the back every time you finish one of my blogs. I tend of over articulate, as you may or may not have noticed. But I always appreciate comments and likes, if that's even how this site operates... Follow me here and on twitter @Jakewhlr117!

     Oh, also, the title of this post is in quotes because it is the name of a song by Andrew Bird, whose music and odd artistic style I find interesting and somewhat perplexing. You can listen to "The Naming of Things" Here:

Until next time...