"Infinite and Fair"

well spring fever

is a summer leaver

and i get knocked down by fall

but it's never over

winter's a snower

i'm over there

for the heres and nows

embracing the best and staring into

your eyes and brows

i'm so happy

we're all drinking again

i hope this never ends

cause goddamn i love

all of my friends

and i love you

i love to reconcile and recollect

i love to smoke and love to

this rippling butterfly effect

that keeps us all in tact

keeps us up at night

bound tightly by a pact

lets us win the war and the fight

who would've thought

that we could all be taught

how to see things for what they are

infinite and fair

nonexistent and far

that everything is as heavy as the air

that blows breezes

and brings up dust

coughs spits and wheezes

that gold is dirt and platium is rust

that everything is circular

and sandpaper is soft as fur

that no matter how bad things get

the show will go on for sure

never forget

15 Hawaiian Baby Woodrose Seeds

We started eating our 15 seeds at 5:00 PM. I’ve eaten 10 before, what I remember as quite easily, but this time they tasted especially dogshit awful. We chewed them one by one and chased it with tea and soda. Janaye ate 10 of hers before, about 30 minutes later, she puked. I finished mine and we all smoked a bowl to help her with the last five seeds, which stayed down.

It was starting to get dark when I really felt it. The trippy light was going and I played a loop through my guitar pedal and we all smoked a bowl. Troy suggested I listen to The End by the Doors with my good headphones, and I did. As soon as the song started I felt it sync with the entire vibe of what I was seeing, people communicating and existing, it was like a scene straight out of a movie. And in that same sense, my vision was raised significantly. It was like going from a small old TV to a 1080i widescreen movie theater screen. My peripheral vision reached maybe twice as far as it normally does. I stared at the trip light as it moved with the song until it ended. Zack and Laura left go to see a movie and bring back tacos.

As I held on to Janaye my perceptions really started to blend. I looked at her face and it was blurred and swirling together. Everything I perceived made sense yet nothing did. Everything was different. It felt as if we had no bones in our bodies, and everything, even the air, felt heavy. I handed Troy my keys because they were uncomfortable and it felt like they weighed five pounds. I felt as if I were a constellation, lines drawn across my body and little points placed among those lines like some kind of stick figure skeleton. Every sense was blending together into one instead of functioning separately.

The three of us then just started talking. About life, death, religion, aliens, world peace, karma, free will, parallel universes, chance, reincarnation, swearing, suicide, God, the universe, and time. Time didn’t exist for us. It became non-linear and I felt as if I was feeling the actual process of reincarnation as a continuous never-ending thing that was going on right then and there, I existed infinitely in every direction in every moment of time. We frequently asked what time it was because minutes felt like hours, and it hadn’t even been an hour since Zack and Laura left, we couldn’t believe it.

As I stared into the ceiling, the lines on it stretched out into infinity. The ceiling never ended, it just went on and on. I became infinite, and so did everything else. The meaning of infinity is something we describe with words, but no words could ever in any way even remotely describe its meaning, it’s something we can’t comprehend in normal states of consciousness in which we don’t have the actual sensation of being infinite and circular. We all decided that everything is infinite and declared “The Lion King had it fuckin’ right man, the circle of life.”

Thinking about death put me in a certain place. I felt like I was dying, but not in the conventional sense. I felt as if all of life truly was a stage, and the grand drape was close to being drawn. I wasn’t dying as much as my life was simply ending right there in those moments. I felt worried about leaving all my friends from dying on this drug, but I felt like even after I faded away that things would still flow and continue. But I snapped out of it and sat back up to drink some water and take a piss.

We turned the trip light off and lit candles instead, and it was even more beautiful, little spotlights in random places of complete darkness illuminating the world around us. One glass candle holder had some cool red design on it and it melted and breathed and moved. We listened to music using my headphones as speakers, ‘cause those things get loud.

Zack and Laura got back with the food and Josh later came over. We all just talked and laughed and shared wisdom and insight. Soon after that things started to move at a normal pace again, I felt more in control and in touch with reality. In fact time actually felt faster, everything was sped up a bit. Troy driving us to Circle K doing 20 MPH felt like 50. We got pop rocks, funions, sour punch straws and monster (lol munchies) and it was all delicious.

Janaye and I laid on the pavement outside and smoked a cigarette, and the moon and stars were flattening and shifting into lines, and tracers of outside lights flickered. I felt like I was seeing everything for the first time. We went inside to smoke another bowl and that brought it back up some more. Things blurred together again and in the candle light, every expression Paige made while talking was exaggerated and cartoonified with tracers. Troy’s figure in the chair looked like a portrait as a faint tread of abstract colorful patterns ran across him. It was now two in the morning and we were still tripping hard. We all decided to crash out for the night finally.

Nine in the morning I was afterglowing and could function normally, at the very most about as spacey as being high, and my pupils were still the size of dimes. With every trip I’ve ever had I at least had the ability to take back with me what I felt and learned in the form of words, but aside from everything above, no words can ever truly describe the feeling I had while peaking, the sensation of infinity stacking and folding into and onto and around and through itself and being one with that, the heightened sense of the universe and life, the feeling of absolute pure and unconditional love. It defies expression.

Oh and the sex was mind-blowing.

~700 morning glory seeds

My friends Troy and Josh and I ground up our morning glory seeds into a fine powder in a coffee grinder. Dillon was there but not to trip. Troy and Josh each took 500, but since I had done that along with 10 hawaiian baby woodrose seeds before, I upped my dose to around 700. I had 1000 left after they counted out theirs so I just split the pile in half and eyeballed some more seeds into one pile to use. We put our powder in coffee filters and tied them up to soak in water for an hour or two. We drank our first cup and over the course of the next hour or so re-soaked our bags for another 2 or 3 servings. Later we decided to eat as much of the nasty dogshit tasting seed mush as we could. I downed maybe half of mine before I had enough. All the while smoking bits of weed not just for any possible nausea but to increase the effects as well.

We laid down on the bed in Dillon’s shed outside and stared at this trippy spinning rainbow disco light thing and that’s when we all started noticing perceptual changes. I noticed odd faces and shapes in the wood grain on the ceiling.

We decided to go inside into Dillon’s room and do pretty much the same thing, but this time with music and the comfort of the indoors. The constantly moving colorful projection on the ceiling I was looking directly at from the couch swirled and blurred over itself like paint blending together, and I felt the sensation of the entire room and my body spinning with it. We were there a good few hours.

Troy and I decided to go out to the living room and watch TV and Josh decided to crash out. Troy and I started to finish watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall. On the couch were Dillon’s pomeranians and I spent a good while petting them, amazed to bits by the sheer awesomeness of life. I texted my girlfriend and that’s when things started building up in a wave I’ve never felt before. I was coming up even more.

There was like an hour left of the movie when I say to Troy dude let’s just crash now, fuck this. So Troy went off to sleep in another room and I thought I was gonna pass out. But it was getting light out and as I stared at various parts of the room I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping any time soon. A shifting rainbow film of something that looked quite a bit like my clusterfuck doodles overlaid the walls as they breathed in and out and sharp florescent blocks of the brightest colors I’ve ever seen sat by where the light entered the room through a narrow opening through the window that wasn’t covered by blinds. I was sold, fuck sleeping.

I went outside, smoked a bowl and crawled into the hammock in Dillon’s back yard. That’s when another wave brought me up even higher. On the walk through his backyard to the hammock I stepped eagerly awaiting the relaxation waiting for me, but I stepped right on a thorn and it stabbed into my toe. It hurt of course, but I thought about it and came to the conclusion that the definition of life is a series of good with intervals of bad.

Staring at the front end of the hammock where my feet rested I started to meditate. The form of the hammock, the crossing tied knot fashion of the construction of the entire thing became my focal point. Upon focusing more I felt as if I became the hammock, I looked at it and physically felt my body adhere to its form, I swayed left and right with it.

It was during these two or so hours that I was at the complete peak, and this was about six hours after drinking the first cup. The timing of drinking/eating the leftovers was timed and paced immaculately. I stared blankly where my eyes looked straight and it was a view of the front part of the hammock, the tree in front of me and the blue backdrop sky. As I focused on the very center of my vision it became more bright and vivid and crystal clear than anything I’ve ever seen in my life. The sheer detail and vibrancy of it all was astounding, it was a window of detail surrounded by the rest of somewhat normal vision.

I ran through epiphany after epiphany through my head, looking at and hearing all around me the animals and bugs nearby. I realized a connection between man and animal I had always known before but never truly realized in any real sense. Man sees the world with bias. He has a mind that allows him to judge and act according to it. And while this is our greatest gift as human beings it’s also our greatest weakness. Animals take the world for what it is and do nothing more but make use of it as their home. It doesn’t matter what’s around them, they’re where they need to be. They use their time here just like we do, but in almost completely opposite ways. In a way I felt like I knew why animals exist to begin with.

I thought of communication and how vital it is to life. We have many forms language, something concrete and physical that we use to express the intangible and formless ideas that our mind gives us. It’s a perfect blend and balance, the physical and the mental, communication is vital. Communication is beautiful. I thought about writing all my thoughts down, but as important as communication is, the here and now of the moment made me realize that anything worth writing about best exists as that experience itself and not the words used to describe it, so I took full advantage of the experience and reasoned to write later. I had plenty of time to scribble my thoughts down later.

I realized that my favorite word of all time is “now.” Because I was there. Everything that ever was and will be was or will be at one point a single speck of Now. I finished my cigarette and wanted another one but I had left my pack inside. Any time of my life I would have gotten up and grabbed it, but this time I embraced the Now for what it truly was and didn’t move a muscle.

In the hammock I meditated more and embraced the Now. Now was perfect in every way. It was then that a stunning realization dawned on me: I knew the meaning of life. The meaning of life isn’t something you know, it’s something you feel. I seriously spent at least an hour total during the rest of my trip repeating in my head “I know the meaning of life,” and every time I did this, time would slow down into this perfect moment where my ego was temporarily dead and all outside influences of my life and anything I ever did became entirely void of all meaning because I had that truly beautiful moment of Now to exist in. All my life I thought that people who said they have no regrets were completely full of shit. But it was lying in that hammock in the Now of our life that I realized I have no regrets, only what-ifs. Never in my life had I been happier. I realized that whether or not there is a god is nothing to ponder seriously, because the closest thing to a higher power we will ever encounter in this lifetime is the universe itself. And we’re part of that, part of God, part of the infinite, tightly packed clusterfuck of rules and laws that govern themselves into something as ineffably as beautiful as life, bound by particles that form atoms that form everything else, the entire whole consisting of never-ending parts comprised of everything smaller that constructed them. For a few fleeting seconds, there was no longer me. Only the universe. Any fear of death I have ever had was wiped entirely clean from me.

It was starting to get bright and hot out then so I went back inside to lie on the couch. I stared at one of the dogs on the floor in between the other couch and the table and its body and the area around it swirled together like a painting and the ground/table/dog became almost unrecognizable, some kind of swirly sharp eye looking thing that very much resembled Tool’s “Lateralus” eye design. It was like nine in the morning and I was just now starting to come down.

It was then that everyone else started waking up. I spent the entire time lying on the couch tripping until the moment everyone was ready to leave. Troy and I were dropped off at his house by Dillon on his way to work where we smoked a bowl and enjoyed the afterglow of the trip.

First/most recent salvia trip

Salvia's a very interesting thing. It's most definitely one of (if not THE) the least accessible drugs out there and isn't for everyone, but with the right mindset it can be an amazing experience. How it can possibly remain legal unlike cannabis is fucking beyond me. I recommend trying it at least once. It's best to use a bong and torch lighter, but a pipe and bic will work too. Also, salvia has to burn, not smolder. So hold the flame over the extract for the entire duration of your drag.

For a first timer I recommend taking one fat bong rip of 20x extract with a sober sitter, hold it in for 5-10 seconds and waiting 10 minutes to see what that does to you. Then just take it from there, you can build on trips by smoking more, like taking one hit, experiencing the effects, and then taking another one 10 minutes later and that second hit could very well send you into hyperspace. But you may not want to do that and save the breakthrough trip for another day.

Read this before venturing into Salvia. Seriously.

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I had smoked a massive bowl about an hour and a half prior to this and was still kinda stoned. I put 2AM by Slightly Stoopid on repeat for the trip. I figured if I heard any music at all during the trip that I'd want it to be chill.

I moved my bed closer to the window so I could hit the pipe blow smoke out the window and lay down. I packed maybe like 3 hits worth of 20x extract into the bowl of my pipe and lit it with a torch lighter. i took a good hit, held it in for maybe like 5 seconds then took another right after. as i was setting my pipe down I noticed my vision was different. My arms looked foreign, like I'd never seen them before, it was definitely hitting me.

I set the pipe down and blew the final hit out. To do this I had to lift up the blinds over my windows a little, and as I did this I suddenly forgot what it was that I was looking at. Everything took on a square-like characteristic and I felt like I had become part of the thing. As I lifted one of the blinds up and down I felt as if the dark square of the nighttime outdoors was my actual body and I was stretching it bigger and smaller, my fingers felt as if they were pinching me and not the blinds. I managed to finally lie down and stared at my Pink Floyd poster. As this happened, the edges of everything around me began to spiral outward, and I felt as if I was being pulled somewhere.

then all of a sudden I’m with friends or some group people existing in some other world. and I’m noticing changes in my perception of reality, the feeling of my existence in that world began to shift. It started with a feeling of little bits of my face disintegrating outward. I’m talking with these people, kind of freaked out by this because the change was coming on very rapidly. I remember talking to these people and coming to the conclusion that someone gave me acid without me knowing it, saying "someone slipped me some acid? oh great, someone slipped me some acid, ahh…" as the collapse of my entire perception of everything got even more intense.

I started to see a weird fractal-like representation of my life and everything I knew. It wasn’t 100% visual, it was like a new sense, perceiving things in ways our five senses can’t. It became more and more beautiful and meaningful in my mind until it felt like I was somehow looking at myself and my life and everything in one single form. I felt physically part of it, and in awe all I could mutter was “oh my god…”

Then i was pushed down, weightless and bodiless but still able to see. visions of weird random memories and shit I could never recall or describe scrolled through some new sixth sense of sight and a voice started speaking to me. our conversation was in weird broken english that made absolutely no sense in this world but i could feel the meaning of it in whatever way we were communicating, it felt like I was asking him what the hell was going on. I looked at my arms and saw the edges of them get torn away straight into the images still passing by.

I felt like I was existing outside of those memories/images and my arms were the physical boundary to them. now I was being cut off. it was an incredibly real feeling physical tearing sensation. Think like a loose thread in a sweater that you pull out and keep following as you pull it out. it was like my body was a sweater, and all the entire thing was being yanked the fuck to nothing, and i felt all the threads undo one by one along my arms. Each thread of my arm being pulled away from me was the physical feeling of real life passing uncontrollably away from me.

at this point i was kind of scared of not existing, and the voice was saying to me "this is the last *something something*" and I got the idea that I was truly about to end. "what? why?" I tried to ask. the flow of images scrolled slowly to a stop: a view of a ceiling fan. I felt a change coming on, thinking this image was the last stop, the end of my life, where it all ends, because at that point I felt I had run out of threads, the process of me being erased was finally over. But then i started saying "oh that's right, salvia, i smoked salvia, fuuuuck that's right" out loud as if someone was there to listen.

i started to realize i was lying on my bed looking up at my ceiling fan. i tried to get up but couldn't, it was like i didn't know how to pull a comforter off me and hop out of bed. I looked at it in my hands and didn’t know what it was, nothing i saw or perceived was making much sense. But I started to get my motor skills back and managed to figure out where i was. i got out of my bed and looked at it with awe. every object in my room was alive in its own way, it had its own space and it was just THERE. I felt like if I got on top of my bed that I would be going inside it, it was bent inward but at the same time not. i got on the computer and tried to explain everything you just read above to a friend online through mangled and typo'd instant messages. It didn’t go well.

as i tried typing, the keyboard took on an alien form, the keys were completely fucked into some strange arrangement and i was trying desperately to type the right thing on this new weird device that was yet wasn't truly there. i gave up with that and just sat back and stared. My computer screen fractal’d infinitely through a space and depth i never knew existed, at times it vaguely formed a face. The effects gradually wore off over 10 or 15 minutes after coming to, and I was left with a nice afterglow the rest of the night, probably from being completely awestruck at just how much my mind was so utterly and completely fucked to pieces.

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I took one fat bong rip of 60x and laid down. within 10 seconds it hit me and i thought oh fuck i'm not prepared for this. i had meant to close my eyes but i guess i opened them. the ceiling immediately started spiraling/fractalling from the top corners of my vision, i felt myself being pulled upward into it, climbing into it. what then happened i swear has happened in every breakthrough experience i've had, but i always have little memory of it and it's so incredibly hard to describe, but i'll try. it's like my personal transition into the absolute peak of what salvia can do to you. there's always a voice telling me something. twice it's happened i was already high before i smoked the salvia, this night i was sober. the two high times the words were gibberish, but this time i could hear "this is what salvia does to you" or “this is what happens when you smoke salvia.” as this voice repeated, i was propelled through some kind of lightning fast never-ending accordion bellows (the collapsible center part between the two handles) that constantly shot upward. or perhaps like an infinite spring, and each loop in the spring was a part of my life and the universe. i was becoming the spring, loop by loop at rocket speed, shooting upward and through and into some other form of existence. but as this was happening, each idea/memory/form/part of existence associated with each loop was being taken away from me, completely destroyed. my ego and identity and mind were no more, and there was nothing but perception of this hellishly intense rollercoaster dimension.

as i got deeper and deeper into whatever it was, i had then become a mass of infinite never-ending tubes comprised as rolling pages in a book. the pages were constantly turning but their edges were like the tubes. they were the absolute core of life as i knew it, the true intangible makeup of the universe, what everything that exists is made up out of but that we can't perceive in normal states of consciousness. but these pages turned and the tubes rolled away until there was absolutely nothing left of me in any way or form, my existence in its entirety had been completely obliterated, even my perception. I was nothing.

what happened during this i don't remember obviously, but eventually my life began to piece itself back together again, bit by little bit in the form of those same tubes. but this time it was more of ocean waves of tubes rolling together, like a metal conveyor belt that you see at airports bringing me back into the right spot so salvia could spit me back through the correct tubes in the belt in which I, in the time and space of the true world, had occupied, like existence itself was this infinite belt of tubes and in the few minutes i was tripping, i had somehow transcended the entire thing from start to finish, experiencing everything and anything and then returning to my rightful place in its system.

as i started coming to, i could perceive the real world intertwined with the tubes, and the voice was telling me to go back to these real things i was seeing as i was being rolled back into reality through the belt. i heard the Boards of Canada playing on the stereo and it told me to go back to it, i saw the stereo system and it told me to go back to it, i was being re-introduced to my entire life, being reborn. as soon as i was conscious enough to stand up and (vaguely) see what I was doing, i did so, talking what probably sounded like gibberish to my friends about the mindfuck i just experienced, trying desperately to collect myself and become comfortable. My friends told me i was yelling something about "the sewers" while tripping and fearfully asking if i had just smoked salvia, as if it were some horrible thing i tried to deny.

eventually i slumped on the couch next to my friends jackson and josh. i had the impression that my friends were somehow "in on it" and that it was all some big cosmic joke that had been played on me, but that impression wore off as i started to sober up, but still tripping massive balls, and as i grew more and more aware of reality i started to remember that everything that just happened was caused by smoking salvia. i could do nothing but say "oh my fucking god" and stare at the table and all the things on it and all the objects in the room, understanding each and every one of them and feeling as if i was one with them all. i have never been more in absolute love with the world and everything in it than those moments on the comedown where it was finally all over and i had some strange insightful and profound understanding of not just the workings of the universe but the absolutely true existence of everything. the sense of relief and joy i felt to see real people that were my friends in the real world i've known all my life was so overwhelming that i told each of them that i loved them. and i really do.

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f

"Dude... Like, Music..."

A paper I did for Music Studio class. "Approximately 500 words of discourse on your perceptions of music and its role in society." Just a short sample of what I could go on about for hours.

Music is a peculiar force in the universe. It can single-handedly change your mood and thoughts. It’s born from and plays on the part of human consciousness that gives it its meaning. For thousands of confirmable years mankind has made music, be it with flutes made from bone or synthesizers crafted with the finest available electronics. It’s perpetual motion, it was introduced to our lives however many years ago and has yet to ever stop. Today we’re exploring the sound spectrum in the most imaginative and creative ways we can possibly think of. We’ve delved exponentially deeper into the infinite possibilities of sound and we’ll continue to do so until the day humans go extinct.

Music is an ineffably important part of society and the culture it bears and it’s hard to choose just one aspect of it to discuss so I’ll just ramble. It’s a product of its time, a unique snapshot of an idea or feeling. Its cultural impact, which in turn impacts human history as we know it, is massive, and it’s still growing to this day. Changes and revolutions in music have ushered in drastically different ages for society, the births of the blues, folk, pop, jazz, rock and roll, punk, metal, electronic and the vast array of subgenres within them inspire new ideas to the listeners.

Some of it changes very little or remains unheard, some of it provokes cultural shifts and movements millions of people in size. The British Invasion and Rock and Roll in general broke the prude music barriers of the previous generation and reached millions of people on an entirely new level. It was the rising tide of new ideas and ways to go about living, and the tide grew. The musicians and listeners grew with it, as did the variety of music being made. Then came the hippies. I mean just look at the hippies, man, millions of peaceful souls all on the same page, peace love and music. And good psychedelics, but that’s another story. The music fueled them, became an absolute form of expression used to project ideas of peace and humanity. It didn’t reach everyone, but it was heard.

Then came the rest of the wave of classic rock, with the same care-giving vibe as the previous era. Punk and heavy metal came later with themes of rebellion and anger and opened the doors for more explicit ideas to come through, giving birth to even more branches of musical history. Hip-hop emerged from a Jamaican DJ reciting poetry over re-sampled disco records and gave people the incentive to just have a beat and voice, and resonated well with - get ready for it - black people – a cultural influence that still stands today nearly as strongly as rock music. The use of beats and the astounding advancements in technology at the time gave way for a seemingly endless source of electronic music that continues to expand. To this day we draw influence from all of it and continue to create something new.

Music is an equally important part of the human experience. It is an art form, and art transcends the expressional limits of spoken language at the expense of being more abstract whereas language is more concrete. But that’s the thing, music describes the abstract, the ineffable, what can’t be put into words. It’s for that sole reason that people make music. It’s the expression of the wordless ideas, and when coupled with lyrics, makes use of language to help help better convey the abstract, coming together in perfect harmony. This is why music is powerful. It cuts deep down into our very souls and hearts and minds and evokes images and thoughts and emotions that help us become one with ourselves and others around us. It has the power to change things. It’s a damn shame that popular music is in its current condition, but at least it will make way for real musicians to keep the ball rolling.

In conclusion, music is pretty cool.

How to get free music off the interweb

Millions of people waste their money with iTunes. 99 cents a song? How bout an entire album (that can build up to an entire discography with a little time) for free? Like many situations in life, Google is the answer.

Mediafire.com is a popular media (mostly audio) sharing website that allows uploads of large files. Countless people have uploaded a plethora of songs, albums, and even tv show episodes on this site. And it's all legitimately free. No bullshit signups, and at the very most an occasional annoying popup ad. But you can easily block those with Adblock if not your browser's default popup blocker.

And Google can help you find files on this site. First, select an album. If the album and band name are the same, look up the album and get its date of release. Now search Google for the following:

ALBUMINFO site:mediafire.com

Replace ALBUMINFO with your album information obviously. If the album title is long and you're as lazy as I am, you can just type some key words or the first few words of it. Throwing the band name in there helps a lot. If the album is self-titled, type the band name and the album's release date. Here are three examples based on Sublime's 1996 self-titled album, "This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About" by Modest Mouse, and "Meddle" by Pink Floyd.

sublime 1996 site:mediafire.com

modest mouse long drive site:mediafire.com

meddle site:mediafire.com

Album downloads are either in .ZIP or .RAR extensions. These file types are basically a bunch of files compressed and put into one single file to make for easier transfer/storage of multiple files. Windows operating systems by default can open/make .ZIP files, but .RAR files require a separate program. .RAR files are pretty much just a bit faster with packing/unpacking and are a few kilobytes smaller than .ZIP files so lots of people use them. Unpack/create .RAR files with WinRAR. Download a 32-bit or 64-bit. If you dunno which is for you, fuck it just try both of 'em. When you open a .RAR file with WinRAR, just hit the "Extract To" button and select the folder you want to put the files in as you would with a .ZIP.

There are downloads of various bitrates available. A bitrate is the amount of data in a song that is read per second. The higher the bitrate, the more detail you will be able to hear, if I'm not mistaken mostly on the treble and bass ends. The difference between bitrates is noticeable but honestly not very large. Millions of people settle with the low-end 128kbps that iTunes sell their files in. And you won't hear much of a difference on cheap headphones. Also the higher the bitrate, the bigger the file. 128kbps albums are roughly around 1mb per minute of music. So know that along with how long an album is when choosing your download, if you care about bitrates at all. I prefer albums in v0, a bitrate that constantly changes based on the amount of detail in a song from 128kbps in quiet or silent moments to around 256kbps in loud complex parts. It's like the middleground from 128kbps to 320kbps.

Which brings me up to FLAC. Songs in FLAC have been ripped directly from the CD and have not been compressed as MP3 files are. Therefor, they're fucking huge, like 500mb per album. Many see FLAC as pointless for casual listening and MP3 320kbps as nearly if not exactly identical in quality. FLAC should be used if you're sampling or remixing the song, as it would be in its most pristine and uncompressed condition; you don't want to remix a compressed song into an MP3, compressing it even more. I've come to the conclusion that you can't hear the difference between 320kbps MP3 and FLAC unless you have some top-of-the-line equipment (like at the very least, $700 headphones and an amp), which I do not. So I avoid FLAC like the plague.

Congratulations, you now understand how to get free music from Google. Now go out there and pirate some shit. I'll help you start.

A Doll's House, But With a Cooler Ending

Something I did for English 12. One of our options for our project was to rewrite the ending of the horrendously monotonous "A Doll's House" into something better. So I did.

Nora: (In everyday dress, lighting up cigarette) Sit down, Torvald. We have much to talk about.

Torvald: You alarm me Nora! Talk? Of what? And what is this travesty? Nora my dear you’ve never once smoked cigarettes. And Marlboros? Really? They taste like complete arse. I don’t understand you.

Nora: No, you don’t, Torvald. You don’t understand me and you never truly have. Nor have I, for that matter, until recently. You see, Torvald, I’ve been doing something lately that I should have started a long time ago. I’m thinking. And it’s opened my eyes to the truth of our marriage, and the truth of you. It must be said.

Torvald: The truth of our marriage? And I? My silly little platypus, if there is any truth of those is it not that our marriage is alive and well, as we are happy and prosperous people who dearly love each other as bound to us by unbreakable holy matrimony? Surely you think not otherwise.

Nora: Dude what the hell, no, seriously look at this. We’re like freakin’ dolls, man. Everything about us is so fake and superficial and formulaic. You’re clearly a control freak that thinks of me and women in general as inferior and stupid bimbos that can’t do anything on their own. You hate a guy because he calls you by your first name. Your head is shoved so far up where the sun don’t shine and you act like a complete tool. We’ve become fake plastic people, Torvald. Remember college? We were really wasted like no other when we first met at that party, your nickname was “Keg stand”, it was wild. But now look at us. I treat the kids like they’re dogs, or dolls, or dog dolls, they’re like play things, like I am to you. We’re so fake. We haven’t even had a serious conversation in the entire eight years we’ve been married. A serious conversation, Torvald, one where we actually express our feelings and emotions and dreams and thoughts to each other in complete and total honesty. All we do is BS about buying worthless crap and making money and looking like rich snobs. All the fancy bank money in the world couldn’t buy you enough compassion to pass as a human being with actual blood pumping through his veins, let alone a real man. We don’t even sleep in the same bed, what’s wrong with you? And your moustache looks ridiculous. And what’s with the names? Squirrel? Songbird? Skylark? Whatever that crazy last one was? It’s just weird. How about Nora? Like, my actual freakin’ birth name, Nora. Our marriage is a sham, it isn’t real. I’ve been dumbed down into an incredibly soulless way of thinking, thanks to you, and it’s time I go out on my own and figure things out for myself. I have to do what’s right for me. I’m leaving you Torvald. Or rather, you’re leaving me.

Torvald: My little ill-minded-

Nora: Shut up.

Nora pulls out a 12-gauge shotgun, cocks it, and blasts Torvald’s face into a crater of skull, brains and bloody flesh that spills out onto his suit and on the floor like water overflowing in a sink. Fragments of bone and teeth speckle random bits of the mess, the only barely recognizable remains of him being part of his eyes, mouth, and one ugly moustache. His lifeless corpse collapses to the floor with a loud thud. The oak wood paneling is painted red with thick slobs of tissue that creep and ooze from the cavern of where his face once was. Nora takes one last drag of her cigarette and flicks it into his blood. She tosses her wedding ring into the fissure of his face and makes her way to the door and opens it, but pauses. She turns around.

Nora: Oh by the way, Marlboros are delicious. (She walks out and shuts the door behind her)

I got an 80% on it, lol.