March Madness

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. How's it been? I've been silent on the writing since the new year. I feel the need to write as an outlet because I believe reading and writing is the greatest tool for communication as a medium. Sure, I talk to friends and family, but you just don't get to really say everything you want to say with friends and family. That's why I've had this blog for so many years. The blog is a good outlet not only for creativity but also to say everything I want to say. I haven't really been too busy or anything, but I do think I had some slight writer's block that lasted all of February. But I've been good. I've been reading, working, and tonight I was playing guitar and electronic keyboard, just practicing, and improvising. 

I've been on a roll since the new year 2026 reading a lot of books. So far already since January I've read 10 books: The Mammoth Hunters [by Jean M. Auel], Van Gogh The Passionate Eye [Pascal Bonafoux], Plato's Symposium, Caesar's War on Gaul, Lolita by Nabokov, Words of Wisdom, The Nibelungenlied,  Cousin Bette by Balzac, The New Grove Mozart, and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I'm also currently reading The Portable Medieval Reader and A History of China. My reading has stayed mostly in the realms of fiction, non-fiction, western canon but I will sometimes still read science fiction, more modern day science fiction as well as the golden age sci fi stuff. 

All the reading has been keeping me sharp and keeping me going. The state of our country isn't good and now all of a sudden we're on day 5 in a war against Iran with our partner Israel. What does reading all these great books of the western canon tell you about the political nature of the times we're currently living in? As Hegel would put it, "We learn from history that we don't learn from history." As bad as Trump and the MAGA Republican tinfoil hat crowd are, we have seen this before and we have been here before. 

Even this war against Iran. We're shooting at them with all these airstrikes and we're hoping for a regime change with no boots on the ground as of yet, which is unheard of and has never happened before. Well, this scene looks a lot like Bush's declaration of war in Afghanistan, but at least Bush got approval from Congress to go to war. With Trump, he declared it and we were instantly in war. It's an interesting time to be alive in the United States, being someone of my age, of my education, of my economic and social class. 

You see, you could argue that Americans like me, American citizens with good education, good family structure, they're doing okay economically, they're eating well, they're exercising, they're getting entertained, they have friends and family, they read books, etc, well you might say that Trump, what Trump does, and the new war against Iran, maybe it might not affect them as much as you think. 

The reality is that the Trump regime has had a profound influence on practically every facet of American culture, politics, entertainment, and governance. I believe, personally, that ever since President Trump was elected, since even the first time, American culture has largely degenerated and gotten worse and worse. I could even see it among the largely minority employees and management at the retail grocery job I worked at for years. You could see that because they loved Trump and praised him, they wanted to become like Trump, which included becoming more hateful and full of cruelty towards others around them. For them Trump wasn't just a symbol of American conservatism, he was the example to show them that it was okay to be a racist, to be hateful, to be cruel, and show it anywhere and anytime they wanted. Yeah, it was that bad there folks. That was just a market. Imagine how people who love Trump would act in a mob [January 6], or in Congress as leaders in the White House. Houston, we have a problem.

Which brings us to the end of February 2026, a new war with Iran. This war is like the perfect foil for Trump because he was already in trouble for the killings of two US Citizens with his gestapo-esque police force ICE [Rene Good, and Alex Pretti who were called terrorists by Kristi Nome leader of Homeland Security] and in addition Trump was in trouble for his too close ties to child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Also, there's the fact that the economy under Trump has slowed down a lot, there's a lot less jobs, food and gas prices are very high, and companies are putting more and more money and effort into AI [stupid idea] when in reality, Americans are struggling to pay rent, eat well, and find a job that gives them enough cash to live in a house or apartment. Trump's problem as President as always, has been affordability, as Democrats would say. Trump inherited a robust economy from Biden, and now when you go to Fatburger you're paying $24 for a burger, fries, and a soda. 

It almost seems at times like what Trump does is seemingly random. Which makes you wonder what is really going on in this world, what systems are controlling what's going on behind the scenes. For example, you notice how not once has Trump pushed back against Putin despite Putin's war crimes against Ukraine. So it makes you wonder, what does Putin have on Trump? Is Trump really a pedophile rapist like the newly reported story said? If its true, then we have to seriously discuss and decide what kind of a country we are and what kind of a country we should be. Because if we allow a guy who's done that to be our President and get us into a war then we have fundamentally failed as a democratic experiment. 

It helps to be somewhat of a cynic right now. In a way, to stay informed, you pretty much have to read the news every 24-48 hours or watch the news on TV daily, just to stay up to date on basic information, but in reality, you still have to question everything, not only Trump and his administration and their actions, but also the news and media itself, as well as yourself. Henry David Thoreau has this great quote where he says all the news stories are all things that have happened in other super old news stories from other times and years. That was a stunning revelation because in some sense, yes, it's very true. 

But why is this, why is that quote true? I think a small part of being a cynic is the feeling and knowing that something is amiss, something is not right, even though you don't know what it is, something like a conspiracy, who's to say that there isn't something like that going on right now and/or has been going on since the foundation of this state. Like I said, you have to question everything, even yourself and your own beliefs, even if you have a low education level, play videogames, and are more concerned about being 'turnt at da club.' There's something undeniable about the current times we're living in that has an eerie similarity to the past, something we don't understand, or perhaps will never be granted the right to understand. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!

Liu Cixin's Three Body-Problem

 

The Three-Body Problem took the western science fiction world by storm when it was translated from Chinese into English in 2014. Liu Cixin not only wrote an amazing science fiction [and he's the most critically acclaimed Chinese science fiction writer] novel but the novel is also the first eastern novel to earn the prized historic Hugo Award [the best award for science fiction novels], thus becoming a bridge between western and eastern science fiction. 

The Three-Body Problem challenges the western conceptions of science fiction, thus introducing us to different ways of seeing science fiction writing, and showing us how very different the idea of Chinese science fiction can be. Science fiction from different cultures are all very different. British science fiction, French, Polish, German, Russian, and American science fiction are all different, well, Chinese science fiction might even surprise us even more than all of those, simply because we, as westerners have never read any Chinese science fiction. 

Keep in mind that I'm an avid science fiction reader, having read all the golden age science fiction short stories [starting with the 1950s stuff], and all the important sf writers of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And The Three Body Problem is much different from all of that. This book is great because it is different, it introduces us to a new cultural genre. The Three-Body Problem is just the first part of Cixin's series, there are two other books in this series after, The Dark Forest, and Death's End. 

The story begins with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and follows with protagonist Wang Miao's investigation in a list of suicides. There's this mysterious video game where you have to wear a haptic suit and its virtual reality. The game is connected to an alien civilization facing extinction. The story takes place throughout different points in space and time that keeps the readers engaged to the end. The characters in the game have to dehydrate their bodies in order to survive these great periods of draught and darkness, a unique feature of the game. 

There are a lot of hard science elements. Liu Cixin is an engineer, uses complex astrophysics in an accessible way for the modern average reader, in order to dive deep into the philosophical nature of man's place in the universe. The novel explores how first contact with aliens would go, alongside the ethical dilemmas if Earth was destroyed by the aliens or other humans. 

The story opens with the turbulent violent era of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which is much different from the western American Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. However, because of the history of America's Revolution in the 1960s, we can see/compare/contrast that with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and learn something from it. There's a deep Chinese cultural connection to this novel that transcends most Americanisms in American science fiction. Liu Cixin loves China, and its easy to see that even from the first page's violence of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which, by the way, gets you hooked right in from the get-go. We can learn from the way Cixin uses the Chinese Revolution as a way to explore deeper elements of science fiction in an emotional way. 

The book is very strong from the get-go. It keeps your curiosity high and the element of the virtual reality video game is sort of like an anime, another eastern import. The only weakness I can see here is that the English translation may or may not be as strong as how the book really is in Chinese. A lot of people have critiqued the translation and said that it feels wooden, but I think this is how Cixin actually writes and sounds. He wouldn't have wanted a wooden translation put out into the west, and The Three-Body Problem would not have earned a Hugo Award if the translation was off. 

However, I do think that because some of the elements of science fiction aren't your traditional hard American/western science fiction elements, I do think some people will simply not like it. But it's their loss, as the book shows you how different and how great Chinese science fiction can be. While Western science fiction often frames humanity as exceptional and destined for the stars, The Three Body Problem humbles us with cosmic indifference, suggesting we may be merely insignificant players in a universe governed by forces beyond our comprehension or control.

Work, AI, Music, and the World: The Latest Scoop on Life, Tech, Tunes, and Headlines!

Bienvenue! There's a lot of new things happening in technology, music, work, and politics. Let's get into it. 

First, I'm no longer working as a cashier at the supermarket. This was a big loss for me as I had been working there for about ten years and grew up there. Now, I'm switching from a social public life to a much more personal private life. It has not been easy and I don't think it will be easy to maintain. However, I'm finding that there have been benefits like better care of my body and health. The main drawback though is the fact that I'm not earning a weekly check. Losing my job due to being laid off was one of my biggest regrets. But life must go on. 

Moving forward, the development of AI is the best story of our time. Why? Because its the only exciting story that isn't mostly focusing on the negative. I initially started using LLM's [large language models, chatbots] back in 2022 to do AI art images for fun and relaxation. Now, I'm finding that I can also do AI videos too. And then there's the chatbots usage in and of themselves, for augmenting knowledge based on subjects I already know about. Another fun method I use using AI: I'll use the chatbot to create and edit prompts for images and create the images from those prompts/edited ideas, and then use the images created and turn that into video. There's even AI music and it's a lot better than you would think. 

That being said, I think AI is the only truly positive story. AI gets a bad reputation because workers think they're coming for their jobs, but the reality is that AI just isn't there quite yet. You can create AI movies and images and books and music but its not really quite there yet. Rather, you can use AI to augment your ideas and creations for movies, images, books, and music, but the AI in and of itself cannot create great art, media, business model, or music. Like anything else, AI is just a tool for the artist, creator, businessman in order to enhance their craft and production. I would say, think of AI less as a new emerging technology and more of a tool that will be used in all facets of society mostly for entertainment purposes for the layman but also as a tool for artists, creators, and businessmen to sell and advertise art and/or products. It's an advertiser's paradise.

Next, the news stories have been mostly negative. Gas prices are up. Inflation is at an all time high. Avian bird flu and measles might become an issue down the road. Donald Trump is the President yet again. What else is new? It feels a lot like Weimar Germany Republic right before Hitler's rise to power. You can be jewish in Weimar Germany Republic but you have to be very careful. That's the kind of precarity we live in right now within this moment. It's not to be taken lightly and we, as young people, shouldn't squander all our free time partying and ignoring politics. A lot of young people here in California have drunk the Kool-Aid and given up on keeping up with politics and/or reading/watching the news, and rather, they have given into a lot of bad habits like getting bad information from social media or their goofball buddies. 

However, how long can a democracy really last? America was fighting for independence from the Brits back in 1776, so it has been quite a while. I sometimes like to joke that America is like a poor man's Rome, and in many ways the current moment in this time is a sort of Rise and Decline of the Western Civilization [Edward Gibbon]. You see that despite the fact that we, as Americans, have more technology, more education, a better richer nutritional economy, and more money than most other people in all other countries, this has not been to our benefit. Rather, you could even argue that it's been to our detriment. With this said theory, you could say that in the long run AI could be a bad thing for American society. But the technocrats would say, "it's all about how you use it." 

Lastly, the best news. I've been keeping up with a lot of music practice. I play piano decently now and I'm still plucking on the guitar too. I taught myself sight reading [reading music notation] from studying Mozart scores and writing it out by hand. I do a lot of ear training listening to music. I use classical scores to practice rhythms on piano. Also, I've discovered that there's been a new jazz age but its hidden online on YouTube. There are tons of old jazz records, some that may have only had limited printings and never saw the light of day in record stores [1958-early 1960s recordings], and they're all now appearing all over on YouTube all of a sudden. As a musician, I decided to go more in the jazz direction because jazz offers more variety in music playing and listening and performance, so it's amazing to see that the artform can somehow still keep its heartbeat alive, even if its a small niche audience on YouTube. I play jazz but I  use classical, rock, and blues as a template to build upon improvisation. It's been a journey, as I first started playing and performing on guitar when I was a teenager. 

Heraclitus: A man cannot fall into the same river twice, for there are ever new waves splashing upon him. 

Live performance 6/30/21

 Had a good jam session today with my friend. Check the video here.

Thank you very much for listening. Please share, listen, critque, feel free to comment, like, and subscribe to my YouTube channel. Check out some of my other videos on there as well. 

guten Abend

Human, Ghoul, Zombie

Hey everybody, how's the quarantine life going? Here, I'd like to share with you a fictional short story I wrote that was inspired by the virus. It's called Human, Ghoul, Zombie. It's going to be a series, maybe eventually the theme would be written into a novel. You can read it here; Human, Ghoul, Zombie

Thanks for reading. Keep social distancing and stay healthy! We will get through this together.  

10,000 views, A Retrospective

The blog has reached 10,000 views! I figured to celebrate I would do a compilation of some of my best posts and say a few words about them. I'll keep the list to ten for artistic value. These posts represent the overall intentions of the blog and most likely my best work.

Overwatch review
Check this one out here. This was a gaming piece I did before I started writing heavily about gaming. I had written about gaming before but not at this technical level or depth. It also helped that overwatch had taken the gaming world by storm even before it came out. It's one of my most popular posts.

John Coltrane First Meditations
Check it out here. This is a jazz appreciation album post I did that's on a fairly technical musical thought level. I worked hard on it and listened to the tunes multiple times to make sure everything was correct with my ears as well as my words. Coltrane's music is a constant inspiration.

All I want for Christmas is you
There's gotta be a holiday post am I right? Check it out here. At the time I was writing this I was sort of fumbling between writing personal posts and writing about the subjects I like. Now I like to think that I keep a good separation as well as equal value to both of those aspects of blogging.

The Mike Stern and Eric Johnson concert
Check it out here. For a while I was going to jazz and fusion (jazz-rock) concerts all the time and writing about them for the blog. My main hang out was the Baked Potato in Studio City, where I saw many cool fusion cats. The highlight of the show was when Paul Gilbert (Mr. Big, Racer X) came out and jammed with Stern and Johnson.

Trigun anime
Check it out here. This wasn't the first time I wrote about anime but it was one of the better anime posts I've done because it was short and concise in comparison to the others. Everybody loves Trigun. Peace and love!

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman
Check it out here. This is another jazz album appreciation from the Bad Plus with saxophonist Joshua Redman. It was one of the best jazz albums that came out in 2015. Jazz fans can certainly appreciate this post because it shows that great modern jazz is still alive and well.

Smash tourney at Fad
Check it out here. I usually write about every smash 4 tournament I go to but this one in particular was especially enthusiastic because it was when I first started going and I took a set. Fad, aka Fire and Dice is this games hobby shop in Woodland Hills where they mainly host smash and magic the gathering tournaments.

Rick and Morty
Check it out here. This is one of the best cartoons to come out in years. It features an alcoholic genius grandpa and his clueless grandson as they go out on science fiction adventures. I liked it so much that I even bought season one on dvd. I haven't gotten around to season two yet but I'm sure it's great.

Mad Max: Fury Road
Check it out here. This was one of the best movies to come out in years-a total adrenaline fueled apocalyptic rush from start to finish. There was controversy over weather or not the film was feminist. It was a big topic of discussion on social media. 

Straight Ahead Vs Free Jazz
Check this out here. This post represents my thoughts on jazz in a short and snappy manner. I love both straight and free jazz but you can see from this that I lean more towards the free jazz musicians that are keeping the jazz tradition alive today.

It was difficult only choosing ten but it needed to be done to keep things uncluttered. Thanks for all the views and the reading! I hope to continue working and become a better writer while getting more attention. See you all on the next post. 

Staying creative in a fast paced mass media culture

     Today I was talking w/ a guy I know through my work about this topic. How does one stay creative in a the mass media culture that we're encapsulated in today? Sometimes it feels like the whole internet thing is nothing but lame jokes, cat videos, and funny memes but it didn't use to be that way. People used to not stare at their phones at dinner and they used to actually be smarter when they weren't staring at computer generated images all day.
     However, I feel like the internet is a good thing because you can reach out to literally anyone and everyone, or no one w/ whatever kind of content that you want. However, there are bad things about the internet. Like how you can waste a lot of fucking time online doing nothing, playing games, editing videos or art, reading emails, checking out Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. After you've been using the internet for a certain period of time you realize that there are no limits to what you can or can't do. Obviously you can't do certain things on the internet that are illegal but there are a lot of things you can do in general. Anyways, how does one stay creative in what I like to think of as the decline of Western civilization?
     I guess I'm not really sure because I'm part of this smartphone possessed generation myself even though I've never owned a smartphone and probably never will XD. I feel that listening to music and playing guitar makes me a creative artist in many respects. However, when I'm playing video games I do not think that's very creative artistically speaking. But there are artistic endeavors when people are making games. Jazz makes me focus on what's important in music. Not just the notes or the tune but the metaphysical sonic being of the music. When I'm playing the guitar I feel like a true artist. Nobody sounds like me and nobody ever will. It's a thing of beauty really and all musicians are this way.
     But yeah, part of me has one foot in this internet crazed phenomenon and the other foot is rooted in old traditions like music, hiking, walks, and going to the beach. Before I had a desktop computer I didn't use the internet that much because I had to walk to the library just to use it. And when I did go the library to use the computer all I did was watch YouTube videos of my favorite rock and jazz groups. It's always been music for me. It's the one true constant that will probably stay with me till I die. Ain't that a bitch.
     For other people staying creative might be writing blog posts, website articles, and news articles. Or going to a demanding job that utilizes all their potential. Or being a painter or sculptor. Or a great business man. The truth of the matter is that most people today aren't creative people. They aren't creators. They're consumers. Most of the people I've met in my entire life are consumers. But there's nothing wrong w/ that. Some people don't want to be creative, they're content being themselves. That's cool too but sometimes its good to step out of the cultural norm. Get your feet wet in the pool people. It's only water.
     There's so much more that could be said on this topic. But I feel like I've explained enough. Take care and stay fresh w/ a ph out there.