Knowing - Too Stupid to Save

I saw that Nicholas Cage movie Knowing last night. It was OK. Not fabulous but ok. It's not as good as Alex Proyas' other movies (The Crow, Dark City, I, Robot) but enjoyable enough I suppose. Anyway, it brought up a few things that bother me. The sad part of the message of the movie is that we need benevolent aliens to save our retarded asses from extinction. Why is this sad? BECAUSE WE'VE HAD THE FUCKING TECHNOLOGY TO SAVE OURSELVES FOR THE LAST 40 FUCKING YEARS!!! Yeah, we are a space-faring species. Or we would be if we weren't busy spending billions of dollars on stupid wars and squabbling over limited resources. In space there is literally, unlimited resources. If instead of these oil companies spending billions of dollars on increasingly complex and expensive ways to get a limited, polluting and inefficient resource on our planet, they could have spent billions on a space infrastructure and get ALL THE FUEL AND ENERGY WE WILL EVER NEED from the planets and moons in our solar system. We could have established colonies on the Moon back in the 1970's. However, the U.S. government thought the money would be put to better use fighting a pointless war in Vietnam and more nukes in the 80's. There were designs on the drawing boards to build self-sustaining massive space habitats. Instead we got Skylab and the International Space Station. Both utterly useless bits of junk floating around with no real purpose. We COULD have been on Mars by now. But instead, we sent a couple of RC cars. If we had colonies on Mars, in the Asteroid Belt and in orbit around Saturn, We could just be like "thanks for the offer weird aliens that like to stalk children but we can handle this ourselves, bye."

Speaking of the aliens, if I was them and took a look at our species I'd be like, "wait a second - why aren't these idiots doing anything to save themselves? They have the technology to do it. Sure, their spaceships aren't as awesome as ours but they work. Why should we save them if they make zero effort to save themselves? They are too stupid to bother with."

So yeah, that's the message of the movie, we are too stupid to save ourselves, despite having the ability to. I guess it's not too far off from the message of my song cycle The Fall of Man but, idk, I guess it's just a bit too depressing when seeing it from another viewpoint. Actually no, what really bothers me about the film's position is "we are fucked and only an outside force (God, angles, aliens) can save us. Which I think is bullshit. We CAN save ourselves, we are just too caught up in our petty bullshit to see the big picture. The Fall of Man is a WARNING. Knowing's position is one of acquiescence, which is just lame.

My Music is Real

I can count the number of concerts I've been to on one hand. And you know what, it doesn't matter. To me, music is purely the audio experience. I don't even know what alot of the bands look like that I listen to. So why is it so important to so many people that music has to be connected to a band, image or record label? I'm not sure but it doesn't make the music any more real to me. Music is the sound. It's the emotion - how it make me feel when I hear it. The music is what is real.

I record music and unfortunately for me, most people don't view music the same way I do. I don't have a band, image or label to make my music more "real." My music is audio only. You don't need me prancing about in a music video or stumbling around on a stage in a crowded, smoky bar to prove it's validity. You don't need a shrink wrapped, over priced CD or a download from iTunes. The music is all there for you to hear. Why don't you have a listen: http://shadowjack.bandcamp.com/

Good News

I got an older machine set up with Windows XP and an old version of Cakewalk. I'm going to try doing some recording on it , possibly today. If it goes well, I'll be able to finish up the album!