Wrap-Up of the Week

On Tuesday I worked on electronic percussion for my new song, and I got all the way through it with snare and kick drum. I didn't add any other percussion, but I did add an ugly-sounding "distorted guitar" synth sound, using the root note of each chord. It sounds terrible, but it will be great for practicing with. Before I do anything else with the percussion, I want to take my beats to the basement and play along with my guitar. I need to make sure I'm developing the skills to play the song as I create the recording, before I get too deep into adding things like cymbals and toms. The rhythm guitar part is only four chords, but it's a crazy, haphazard composition, and I'll have to play it rather fast. But playing punk riffs quickly is my biggest strength on electric guitar, so I'm playing to my strengths.

For Wednesday my goal was to create some character profiles for my novel, and while I felt like didn't get very far, I then gave Tara a lot of information about my main character, so I got some good work done. I know where he grew up, where he trained as a scientist, what he does in his spare time, and what he's working on in the lab. I found a scientific article by a group in India that helped a great deal and fit in extremely well with my story. That was a great find. I know what he looks like, too, because he's related to an actual person, a football player in the '60s.

And the female love interest had been changing from a white girl to one who's part Mexican. But then I came across a name in my project at work that turned out to be a common Brazilian name. It just happens to be the last name of the man who was shot seven times in the head by London policemen, who wrongly suspected him of bombing a tube station there in 2005. Since my story involves villainous policemen, I just had to use that name and make her part Brazilian. There's a Brazilian cafe in Oklahoma City, so there must be Brazilians in the area. Anyway, I visited a Brazilian community in Massachusetts last year, so they're not a total mystery to me.

Thursday I woke up late but managed to read another chapter of Ghost Recon. I'm pretty close to the end now. That was a good chapter, and I don't know if the main character survived it. Pretty safe gamble he did, though. Although when I play him in the video game, he dies every time, so you never know. 

I also managed to squeeze in G.I. Joe #72, wherein starts the Cobra civil war (or so I hear). It was really cool to finally see the inside of Pit III, but disappointing to see how lax the security is there! I guess when you're in the middle of a Utah desert, some things go by the wayside. Our heroes are in deep doodoo now, though. 

On a separate note, I just heard the trailer for the G.I. Joe sequel will be out next Tuesday! Will Snake Eyes' mask still have lips? Tune in next week! Looks like Roadblock, Lady Jaye and Flint will be in this one, which is nice. Roadblock will be played by The Rock! Also, RZA plays the Blind Master! And the guy who played Thor is Firefly. And Bruce Willis is the original G.I. Joe! Rock on! But a character named Mouse will be in it too, whom I never even heard of before, played by one of the guys in Social Network (the kid from Jurassic Park!). Ridiculous. Also, no Scarlett or Cobra Commander, but that's not the film creators' fault. The actors didn't want to play those parts again, apparently. Can't say I blame them.

Finally, this morning I finally watched a kung fu film I've wanted to see for ages, Master of the Flying Guillotine (1975). And what a pleasant surprise. It's the best kung fu movie I've seen so far, and one of the best martial arts films I've seen. The action, the story, the costumes, the fighting styles, the weapons and even the music were great fun. It certainly must have inspired the King of Fighters video game series that I love so much. What a great film. I think it may help inspire the sound of my album in some way.

I got excited this week about a tiny college in Idaho called New St. Andrews. I like what they're doing, and my favorite reformed pastor is a faculty member there. I found their required reading list, and I want to make it part of mine after I finish Smiley's People. I've read a few things on this list (crossed out below), but not much (I found out this morning that Tara read a lot of it in college, much of which I'd never heard of!). I definitely want to add some Hemingway novels to this list, too. 

Since there's no guarantee the list will stay on that Web site, I'll paste it here:

THEOLOGY (Lordship) Anselm, selections (read The Proslogion) Athanasius, On the Incarnation Augustine, City of God Augustine, Confessions Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Irenaeus, Against Heresies Luther, Bondage of the Will (Principia) Luther, 1520 tracts New Testament Old Testament (History) St. Benedict, Rule (Traditio) Anselm, Proslogion and Monologion Aquinas, Selections from the Summa NATURAL SCIENCE (Lordship) Darwin, Origin of Species (Nat. Phil.) Euclid, Elements Newton, Principia (selections) SOCIAL & POLITICAL SCIENCE (Traditio) Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations Aristotle, Ethics and Politics Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers Hobbes, Leviathan John of Salisbury, Policraticus Locke, On Civil Government Machiavelli, Prince Marsiglius de Padua, Defensor Pacis (selections) Marx, Das Capital or Communist Manifesto Plato, Republic Rousseau, Social Contract U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence Weber, Protestant Ethic HISTORY (History) Bede, Ecclesiastical History Herodotus, Histories Plutarch, select lives Thucydides, Peloponnesian War William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum Henry of Huntington, Historia Anglorum EPICS (Traditio) Beowulf Chaucer, Canterbury Tales Dante, Divine Comedy Homer, Iliad Homer, Odyssey Milton, Paradise Lost Ovid, Metamorphoses Spenser, Faerie Queene  Vergil, Aeneid

DRAMA (Traditio) Aeschylus, Oresteia Aristophanes, selections Euripides, selections Shakespeare, selections Sophocles, Theban plays NOVELS (Traditio) Austen, representative title  Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress Cervantes, Don Quixote Conrad, Heart of Darkness Defoe, Robinson Crusoe Dickens, representative title Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov Faulkner, The Sound and The Fury Goethe, Faust Melville, Moby Dick LETTERS (Rhetoric) Aristotle, On Rhetoric Plato, Gorgias or Phaedrus Pseudo-Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium Cicero, De Inventione Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria (Traditio) Aristotle, Poetics Montaigne, selections Plutarch, Moralia (selections) ART & ARCHITECTURE (Traditio) Palladio, The Four Books of Architecture Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, On the Abbey of the Church of St. Denis and its Art Treasures Vitruvius, On Architecture PHILOSOPHY (Traditio) Aquinas, selections fromSumma Aristotle, selections Berkeley, selections Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy Duns Scotus, selections Derrida, selections Descartes, Meditations Hume, selections Kant, selections Leibnitz, selections Locke, selections Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Plato, selections Russell, selections Plotinus, selections William of Ockham, selections Wittgenstein, selections

To cap this off, Melt-Banana has been a huge influence on my musical creativity lately. Here they are playing "Lost Parts Stinging Me So Cold" in England a couple of years ago: