Hi everybody.

I seriously haven’t forgotten about this thing. I was having some trouble with the new Flatirons system so it made me not feel like posting anything for a while. However, it appears as though I’ve sorted the problem out, so I might as well start making some entries again I figure.

I have LOTS of news musics… well ok some, but much more to come. So at some point I’ll start putting those up on the music page. Also check back in a week because I should be getting the date for my recital, and that will go up as soon as I have it. I’ll be e-mailing folks too about the date too so no worries. It should be fun times, I’m really excited! The culmination of years of hard work.

It’s been very cold here and the Pats are in another Super Bowl next week. So business as usual. I don’t really have anything smart-ass or witty to say right now because I’m tired and I have class tomorrow. Anyway I’ll have plenty of time to bitch at you later.

Ok hopefully everything’s more or less back to normal. Links from outside the site might not work anymore, and I wasn’t able to recover comments for the main section, but they seem to be disappearing after they are 4 months old anyway, so I guess it’s not a huge deal.

I’ve got a 3-day weekend coming up, which is good because we’re in that last little push before the end of the semester, so I have myriad projects to work on, since I’ve been wasting time going to hockey games and whatnot (Whoo Pioneers! That was a sweet game..).

After the semester ends, who knows what will happen? But maybe this summer I’ll have a little time to play around with the site some more.

In the meantime, hopefully you all can figure out the new categories and find them helpful.

All right, well I’m making some organizational changes to the site to make it a little easier to navigate. The changes should have been relatively painless within iBlog, but as many of you probably know, “relatively painless” + “computer” = “everything deleted, system destroyed, havoc wreaked, etc. etc.”

So as you may or may not have noticed, all the entries are gone. I have them backed up, so I’ll be adding them back in as soon as I can, but iBlog is making it more of a pain in the ass then i had hoped.

In the meantime, keep checking back. I haven’t been writing rambling crap entries as often, but you’ll notice I’ve continued adding to the music section, and those blog entries are still intact, so head on over there and listen to some music. NOW DAMMIT!

Hi again all you sexies.

Well I finished my studying for today, so I’m taking the extra time to do an update. Time has been a scarcity of late, but it happens this way every semester. You’d think I’d have gotten used to it by now, but it still seems to come as a surprise somehow. The good news is, I’m on the home stretch, with just three more weekdays of finals, papers, and portfolio madness, and than it’s home again for the holidays to decompress.

These last few days I’ve made an interesting discovery. For all of you folks out there are looking for a good exercise solution to tone your legs and glutes (tehe!), here’s a tip: go to your local ice rink or general public sheet of ice, and try walking around on it for an hour without falling down. If you’re wondering how I made this discovery, then wonder no more; this was my commute back and forth to school every day for the past week. And man, my legs kill right now. The pain is how you know it’s working.

In other news, I’m in grave danger of losing in the first round of fantasy playoffs this weekend, in which case my whole season would pretty much be ruined. Which sucks because I managed to finish in 2nd overall for the regular season. But them’s the breaks— just ask any pro football coach. I’m sorta glad I don’t have my reputation and livelihood riding on it. Much.

Here’s some new words to add to my List Of Words That Have Struck Me As Silly At Some Time Or Other: smart, next. Does anyone else do this? Where suddenly some common-usage word strikes you as being really dumb or weird? Maybe I’m the only one.

Anyway, I could ramble on like this for months, but I have to go play with Mr. Picassohead some more. It has me transfixed. Here’s my first masterpiece. And don’t ask me what the S stands for, because I don’t freakin know.

Now everyone: go forth and do excellently on your finals! If you have them! Otherwise do excellently at other things! I shall see some of you soon…. mwahaha… mwahahahha…. MWAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAAHHAAHA!!!

I need therapy.

Yeah yeah yeah.. I know. I’ve been slacking. Luckily, nobody really cares that much.

I started off with so much momentum, started the blog, was writing a whole bunch of tunes, keeping up on schoolwork, taking care of myself and my apartment, studying at the library, submitting stuff, just generally trying to make myself useful. And now I’m reeeeally starting to drag again. It happens every semester. Not just during the semester, during the summers too.

So anyway, I’ve just kind of felt like I don’t have anything interesting to write about. Which is stupid, because I can write a blog entry on anything, like that pungent rotting fruit that I have to trudge through on the way to class, or the fact that I woke up this morning and the water had been shut off, or that I just got another invoice from my realtor and have to go back over there again to straighten out more stupid crap, or even my projects that I’ve been working on, or the weather which is getting all cold again.

It’s kind of funny that all of the things I just listed are things that are out of the ordinary, or things that are in a state of flux. Things that aren’t new and exciting kind of fade into the background. I wouldn’t probably write about that stretch of Boylston I walk down every day, unless they were doing construction, or shooting a movie or something. I probably wouldn’t mention anything about my apartment that I’ve been living in for several months, unless I had gotten something new to put in it, or if it had burned down or something.

It’s just the way we are wired as people. Our brain has this amazing ability to focus, to ignore everything but what has changed. Otherwise our senses would be completely overloaded constantly. Imagine always being aware of the soundscape at the same time that you feel every current of air passing over your skin, taste the inside of your mouth, smell your own deodorant, and see every object within your field of vision equally well. Just imagining it is enough to make me want to lie down and pass out.

And so nature has given us this ability, in order to avoid overstimulation, to filter out that to which we are accustomed, to acclimate ourselves to the surrounding environment. It is a revolutionary talent, it is one of the things that man has yet to understand or reproduce in his own creations. It’s what allows us to perceive the world, and still have some brain power left over to interpret what we are perceiving. It’s what allows us to understand.

Yet however revolutionary and incredible the benefits are, as with everything, that’s how tragic the downside is. Whatever it was that made you happy a month ago, has faded into the background. We are not allowed to forge a perfect, happy world for ourselves and then sit back and relax and enjoy the rest of life in a state of unadulterated bliss. It just doesn’t work that way, because soon we would find ourselves craving something new and exciting. We were meant to struggle to be happy. Because without unhappy, there would be no happy.

I don’t necessarily mean to imply that it is all related to our brain chemistry. Part of it may very well be societal. I think about how tribal people who lived on the same patch of land their entire lives and were never exposed to the rest of the world must have lived. They didn’t know that they had the option to change their lives. Maybe they were perfectly content since they didn’t even see a choice there. Maybe I simply feel worthless at times because I see the opportunities and possibilities around me every day, ones that I choose not to take. If I decided one day to take all of those opportunities, my life would be completely different at the time I go to bed from how it was when I woke up. And then, boy, I would have a lot to write about. For a couple weeks.

In any case, maybe we do have a sort of innate need for some sort of constancy after all. Because the farther I go, the more I realize that there is nothing I can count on to be a permanent fixture in life, and it’s scary as hell. Leaving everything behind, well that can be a revolution too. And, as I mentioned, there is an upside and a downside to everything. New stuff to write about, yet no one left to read and understand it.

I guess my point is, you can’t count too much on things to be constant. Not even *gasp* this blog. Because it just may let you down someday.

If you’re reading this blog entry, you are obligated to click the “Comments” link down below and leave a comment. I think you’ll find that it’s not too difficult, and actually can be quite a rewarding experience!

If you’re not reading this blog entry, then I can make scathing remarks about you and you probably won’t care. Well I suppose you might, if you had read it previously, and then at some point you remembered what I had said about people that weren’t reading this blog entry, and since you fit into that category at that particular time you realized that the comments applied to you. And then the next time I talked to you you would say, “Jared, you made me cry.” And then I would feel bad.

Unless, of course they were tears of joy. Then I wouldn’t feel so bad.

Unless I hated you. Then I’d probably be more irritated than anything else.

Unless you had a cold, cold heart, and feeling joy caused you great physical pain. Then I would cackle with delight!

Unless you were a masochist, and you enjoyed it. How irksome.

Unless you were publicly chastised for your deviant sexual behavior. In which case I would revel in your humiliation.

Unless it turned out that a majority of Americans support masochism, and you used your newfound public acclaim to run for political office and you won. Then I would shake my fist at the ceiling and curse.

Unless that public office was titled “Head Dick,” and didn’t come with any real executive power, but the only duty was to be the subject of public ridicule and mordacious political commentaries. That would be funny.

Unless somehow by being such a good sport you managed to have a strange relationship with the public, where you were loathsome but somehow also endearing, and so you got invited to lots of parties and fundraisers, and turned out to be quite popular. Then I would throw my hat onto the ground and stomp on it in frustration.

Unless you gained a reputation among your new “friends” that at these parties you had a tendency to pretend you knew a lot about things that you actually didn’t know thing one about, and so you came across as being kind of stupid and they made fun of you a lot behind your back. That would be oh so sweet.

Unless you never found out that they didn’t like you, because ignorance is bliss. Then my plot would be foiled.

Unless you were SO ignorant that you couldn’t tie your own shoe. This would bring me great satisfaction.

Unless you had those weird basketball shoes with no laces. Then I would scream and rip my hair out of my scalp.

Unless these shoes were extremely uncomfortable and gave you big, painful, unsightly corns on your feet. That would be awesome.

Unless you went to see a really hot pediatrist, and you ended up sleeping with him/her. That would piss me off!

Unless the pediatrist gave you a scorching case of herpes. Then I would be happy.

Unless what really happened was, you were supposed to go out with the pediatrist, but your twin brother/sister answered the door, and then decided to pretend they were you and went and banged the pediatrist and contracted herpes, and you saw it as poetic justice for having stolen your date away from you. This would aggravate me to no end!

Unless I hated your twin brother/sister even more than I hated you. Then it would be ok I guess.

… But I digress. Leave comments!

Interestingly, the acronym for this new name is JBOBB. This may not seem interesting at first, until you consider that my first and last initials are J and B, respectively, and my middle name is Robert, for which a common nickname is Bob. Thus, J. BOB B. could technically be some weird shortened form of my full name.

Kind of blows your mind, doesn’t it? Unfortunately it is considerably less incredible when you realize that J. BOB B. can also stand for John’s full name. But it was still a good effort at rationalizing the new title choice I think.

Anyhoo, I discovered the wonderful world of blogging, which makes it nice and easy for me to make updates and changes and stuff, which, by the way, is a good thing, since no one likes things that are difficult. No one.

So I’ll be trying to post up things periodically that may be of some interest to somebody, and maybe that somebody will turn out to be only me. Which is ok, because hey, I count. Sometimes. And at the very least  I’ll post random thoughts and events on this main page from time to time, and if someone reads them, well then so much the better!

Cool, so, enjoy and stuff.
Jared