The 4 Month Challenge

I have a friend called Shelley who is a very motivated human. I met her in Longhorn Band. I have to admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of my time in the band, as I spent most of my time in the pit percussion area (mallet instruments), muttering under my breath. Like Gollum, but not as charming.

Anyway, Shelley exercises and stuff. I’m kind of on an exercise kick too, and I’m receiving the benefit of happy drugs since I’m ditching some of my more offending pharmaceuticals. I won’t get into it, but I’m not as sickly as I used to be. No more Hector Pi Laureate or anything. No more hormonal madness. Nada. So I have an oppurtunity to bend my metabolism to my ever-loving whim.

I put my goals up in a previous blog entry. So how am I doing?

Well, not well so far. This is typical of me. I always rebel at the first start. I stick my tongue out at it.

AT THIS POINT:

1. I have not gone to martial arts this week once. This is bad because I only went once last week, and twice the week before. Unk! I’m going to have to go tomorrow morning, which is going to HURT! And then there’s classes every day including Saturday. I should try to make Saturday, because they have tournament practice then. I should also go Thursday, because that’s when I usually meet up with the 8pm people (which is where I should be tonight!).

2. I didn’t write down my food for the last two days. This is a two day slip-up and has happened for the first time in over a month. I’ve been good about this for an entire month. I’ll write down my food as soon as I’m done with this blog. I’m going to take my vitamins too, because I just loaded three weeks worth of them. It’s not on my “official” list of goals – but it should be in my mind.

3. I practiced for over 4 hours today, so that’s good. It was not really regimented practice, nor did I really get any ideas down. I am firming up ideas for 3 or 4 songs that will need to be finished and put on the 2 hour set though. I’ll need to tighten up on the scheduling and get organized about the rehearsing soon, but it’s good work. I did some good vocal rehearsing.

4. I was all over the place today, socially. I’m net-stalking people who really shouldn’t be net-stalked … I’m CARING WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK (this is a huge no-no in my case), I’m getting in over my head. I need to detach and go back into my own little world. I have told myself that I’m Face-banned. I don’t know for how long. This is good. I’ve enrolled in a writing contest and I’m waiting for Song Fu. These things don’t directly pertain to my goal … but they will help keep me out of the trouble that excessive brooding brings.

I will try not to engage in excessive blogging, or Twittering … or anything.

5. I didn’t get anything done on the studio, but everything tiny thing in the house that I clean is a step in the right direction toward that.

 

Practice makes Totally-Adequate-and-that’s-Just-Fine, thanks

I’m in a group on Facebook where we’re trying to meet our goals by the end of the year. Here are mine:

Denise’s goals:

1. Go to martial arts no less than 3 times per week for the rest of the year

2. Continue writing down everything I eat – every day (avg. 1200-1500 calories-ish, and not usually more than 2100-2300 – depending on exercise needs and other-type things)

3. Get my studio completely set up and all my songs rough recorded

4. Rehearse two full sets to “readiness” so that by January I can … START PERFORMING AGAIN.

5. Think before I dial, click send, or do other potentially neurotic activities.

I would like to blog my progress on these things, but I’m going to be gentle with myself. If the computer distracts me from all this, off it goes. I suppose I will (try to) keep you updated, whoever you are

 

‘This Thing Between Us’

This is my entry for the Brigit’s Flame writing contest. I don’t think that anyone but Flame members can vote in it (it’s an lj community).

It’s on my journal here:

‘This Thing Between Us’

 

Isn’t it irenics?

The word of the day today is:

irenic
\eye-REN-ik\

adjective;

Meaning

: favoring, conducive to, or operating toward peace, moderation, or conciliation

*****

Why have I been so late eating breakfast? Who knows? All I know is that today I am shooting for a block of uninterupted practice time. That just sounds like a bliss-out to me… Just me, dramatics free:)

– Post From My iPhone

 

bloggity-blog-blog-blog

After much deliberation, I’ve decided to import this blog into Facebook notes … hoping it lights a fire under my butt about getting back into this blog – which I am actually meant to be updating more regularly.

We’ll see. I’m not all that fond of the internet, and we’re just really lucky that I don’t lose my cell phone in a bar toilet more than twice a week when I go out to hear a show.

 

‘O Queen’

I have gotten into Masters of Song Fu round three by the skin of my ass. Here is the song, ‘O Queen‘ – and its lyrics below. I will post reviews of both rounds on this site.

Thank you!

 

O QUEEN

Men look at queens of the past for their clues
trying to see where the problem lies
in these old women’s shoes

Many men could have said / off with the ladies head!
what shall I do with her ?
maybe my wife should burn …

 CH
Queen Christina, oh Queen Christina
how thankful am I, that I live my life in 2009 …

I look to the past and know my sorry ass
would have tried not to fight
but my head would have ended up upon a pike –

for all to see
matrimonial expressions of horror
at justice gone so awry!

CH / BR
If now were then
would you’ve pulled me off of the fire … then ..?
 - instead of now asking me for advice

CH-out
Queen Christina, Queen Christina oh queen …

 

PS. Christina is Christina of Sweden. She was not executed and lived from 1626-1689. She was the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus and she was a patron of the arts – helping men such as Corelli and Scarlatti.

 

Anna’s Gerbil – starring TORI

This is Tori, the gerbil in question and the star of the Masters of Song Fu Round Two competition song ‘Anna’s Gerbil & the Singularity.’ Tori is part of a gerbil community with the charming name Twin Squeaks Gerbils.  I really lucked out by not sampling some random gerbil.  I know all gerbils are God’s creatures; all heading toward eventual singularities of their own … But this is a celebrity gerbil.  She’s had many views.  She’s got more fans than me …

Random Gerbil would be an AWESOME band name …

 

Songfu Entry Number 2

Here it is:  

‘Anna’s Gerbil & the Singularity‘

You can vote at the Quick Stop Songfu webite.  If you have trouble voting, refresh the cache and try again.  The voting engine has been squinky.

Below is the story of the song.  If you feel there are any gaps or questions, use your imagination!

Happy Hearing

DH

The way I keep things (relatively) short is to do it in list form, so we’ll keep it to that:

‘ANNA’s GERBIL & the SINGULARITY’ …

1. Anna is abruptly awakened! Her gerbil was already awake, spinning-spinning on his cute wheel.
2. She hears something … she is amazed and communes with it. Its beauty distracts her from a hostile takeover of her bedroom.
3. This is their first step.
4. The strange visitors come in two forms … Master and Slave
5. The slaves can fit in a cage … but gerbils don’t think of themselves as slaves like the visitors do
6. The slaves are very tiny, the masters, are not. The masters have lovely voices.
7. The gerbil doesn’t want to share his cage with tiny programmed slaves running robot military drills in between his wheel and the food.
8. Anna feels her gerbil is upset; the gerbil becomes agitated and protests his plight by loudly stomping his foot.
9. The tiny robots suddenly understand they are in a first contact situation and immediately disappear – taking their large ship and masters with them.

Do Anna and her gerbil now share a psychic connection? Did the self-improving scarily advanced “race” of robots’ finally reach a tipping point into self-actualization? Did the robots and the gerbil come together in a kind of psychic and territorial peace treaty? Were the robots ever going to grow in size?

Who knows? Maybe they had eerie weapons and it is better they left. Maybe they went to a certain wormhole to study the reject song ideas. Or simply, to rock.

 

ThemTube

So, I’m uploading a video on YouTube.  

It’s just a cute little video I took of a friend of mine’s kid at a Mexican restuarant a few months ago.  But I’m thinking about these things, because I’m doing this SongFu thing and everyone is doing videos and achieving and doing all this other stuff.  I’m a real hermit crab – and don’t even like to put that many things on myspace.  I’m really chuffed that I’ve even put ‘Tomorrow’s Not Today’ up there, because it’s a real good song and I feel like I’ve “lost” it somehow to the “powers that be.”  Even when I get it “back,” there will still be a “server copy” lying around somewhere and that could get hacked to bits and changed into a combo Elephant Tap dancing PeeweeHerman Rapa-baroqabilly Housetrance Acoustic Spoken Word Solo Underwear Concerto.  That’s if anything amazing ever happens to-me-ha-ha (which is the type of attitude I suppose these big companies bank on you having; the “well aren’t YOU big for YOUR britches to think that YOU need to copyright yourself so much that your PRECIOUS material doesn’t need OUR DIY help … you VISCIOUS PROLE!!!”).  Meanwhile, there’d be a lawsuit the size of Pangaea if we took a brass farthing from them …

Anyhow …

So I’m doing some research on all this, and I’m uploading the video at the same time.

Funnily enough, the video kept loading JUST fine.  But the ‘terms of service’ site kept coming up with a server error message.  As in “the YouTube servers are busy.  Or down.  Nuttinhoney ??? Move along, Charlie!  :)9 (that’s a cybergrin with a stylish and jaunty goatee).  All the while, my file’s busy chugg, chugg, chugging away. Now, I’m no techie.  Maybe I was part of the traffic clog.  But it seems kind of odd to me.  How much fairy dust does it take to open the terms of service page?  Why is that one the first to go?  And three times?  How extremely odd!

I did find an interesting article about all this though.

Makes me rethink all my plans about how I’m going to do all this.  Again.  Like I haven’t been already the whole time.

Would Alex Jones feel proud?  One-upped?  Or just call me an ameteur.  A dilletante!!!

DH

1. Bedtime.  HA!;  2. Lists: Finally making their wordpress debut.  Yay.  They’ve been on my lj forever; 3. Songfu: starting to freak me out; 4. Husband: sleeping, like a normal person.  I should record him, because he’s snoring; and sounds like Ferris Beuler’s recording.  That’d just be wrong though; 5. My blankets itch.  This might have something to do with my non-sleepiness.  And excessive Twittering …

PS.  Texas thunderstrorms rule, except for the stupidroaches.

 

‘Leave the Stone Alone’

Vote for my SONG FU song here.  Or forward this to EVERYONE you know so that THEY can vote for it

LYRICS are HERE

The voting engine is having trouble.  So you may have to try a few times.  This is a pain, so action will really jack up your karma!

Also, to further add to the confusion, my track is a bit … quiet.  Make sure you turn it up.  Yes, I will learn how to normalize properly in the next round.  The song is still, however, a STUNNER!

DH, out

PS. The song is not actually called ‘Leave the Stone Alone, Yep.’  There is no ‘yep.’  I had to send a corrected file.  If I’d been able to send another, or another in a series of orrected (perhaps normalized?!) file/s … you may be begging all your friends to vote for ‘Leave the Stone Alone_Yep2 ;’ or even ‘Leave the Stone Alone_Yo-Diggety-Doo-Shampoopidditydoo’

And that’s just CRAZY Talk!