May 4, 2024

Ridiculous Opinions #246

The school year is winding down and I have to say that it feels like it should have ended about three weeks ago. The fact that we have seven more weeks to go just kind of melts my brain. However, I DO have the summer to look forward to, which is going to be spectacular (of course).

In lieu of having anything really to say today, I will simply post some things that I’ve been thinking about.

THOUGHT #1: I grew up without a lot of money and it has taken a bit of an adjustment to my thinking as I’ve gotten older to realize that now I do, in fact, have money. I don’t have to panic when I spend money now and I don’t have to worry about the repercussions that will come from that spending. Thus, this morning, on a whim, I ordered a custom Oklahoma City Thunder jersey to wear in celebration of my favorite team doing well. Absolutely ridiculous.

THOUGHT #2: I’ve been messing around with lalal.ai as of late. Basically, this program uses artificial intelligence to take a song and strip away its layers. You can use the program to remove vocals from songs (which is fairly common nowadays), but you can also do some neat things like isolate the drum tracks or guitar tracks. This is endlessly intriguing to me, so I spent part of this week taking some of my favorite songs and stripping them apart. It was neat to hear the purity of some of the vocals or to hear the intricacies of a guitar part that might have gotten lost in the muddiness of the mix. I had grand plans to start doing my own remixes of my favorite songs until I realized…

…I’m not good at it.

At first, I thought I was going to be a remix master, redoing all of my favorite tunes, but then when I thought I was going to be awesome, I just…wasn’t. I would take a song and maybe play it without the lead guitar. Or I might have the drums come in a bit later. But overall, my mixes were just BORING.

This was sobering to me. I’m usually decent at things. I can pick skills up fairly quickly and do a serviceable enough job on them, but this was something I just wasn’t good at at all. It was very disappointing. It’s the same with color when I’m doing an artistic project. I think I have a learning disability when it comes to color. If it wasn’t for the “color harmony” tab on Procreate, I would be a mess.

Anyway, lalal.ai is cool, but that is a chapter in my life that I am going to close quite quickly. I’ll leave it to the pros.

THOUGHT #3: I don’t know if it’s sad or wonderful that I read an article about drinking fountain buttons this week. Please understand this…I didn’t see an article about drinking fountain buttons. I didn’t scroll past an article about drinking fountain buttons. I READ an article about drinking fountain buttons. I read it with focus. I understood what the article was about. I absorbed this article.

Right now, I’m leaning more towards the wonderful aspect of this, rather than the sad. I love the internet. I love that I am constantly learning about things as I scroll through my browser. Everything I want to learn about, I can find on the internet. That makes everything glorious.

THOUGHT #4: I sent this text to my friend, Chris, this morning at 6:24 AM.

I believe this. I really do. This woman owns Trump’s soul. He has always been weirdly deferential to her. I don’t understand and this is the only proper explanation for it.

THOUGHT #5: Here is a long list of stuff that Brian Cox hates. I read it. You should have to read it, too.

Sometimes, I feel like I am becoming Brian Cox.

THOUGHT #6: This week, I began my first novel in several years. It is a science fiction novel called The King is Dead. I’m hoping to write something fun and exciting. 1000 words a day. I’ll keep you informed.

THOUGHT #7: Last night as I was drawing a Maurice cartoon, I was listening to a podcast about the beginning of the universe from John Green. It was late at night and I was a bit tired. For the briefest of moments, the weight of existence fell upon me and I thought, I’m sitting here drawing a cartoon about a talking beaver. The whole of creation…the Big Bang, the crapshoot of existence, the randomness of the whole of our lives…ALL of this has led to ME sitting here, drawing a cartoon about a talking beaver late on a Friday night.

And then I realized that nothing was random, that the universe was brought into existence not as a happenstance, a rolling of the dice that led to this random moment.

No. The universe was created BECAUSE I was supposed to do this.

I realized the universe was created FOR me and BECAUSE of me.

I have vowed to start living my life with this assumption.