Andrew Speaks/Types

I’ve decided that next year, after Andrew Speaks/Types is over, I have decided that I’m going to do a music blog. Once a week (I can’t do this every day thing anymore, haha), I’ll upload a torrent of zip file of an album that I think people should listen to, write a little bit about it, and put it on the blog. I know that it’s been done to death, but I think I could use it to my advantage, already having at least a little fanbase from Andrew Speaks/Types.

I’m excited. I think I’ll enjoy it a lot. Now I just need to quit thinking about it and focus on this.

I was at my friends house yesterday, and forgot to blog, for the second day in a row. As I was trying to go to sleep last night, I thought to myself: why am I still blogging? It’s becoming more of a hassle than it is something fun now.

Then I thought to myself: well, I’m still doing it because the goal was to have a blog a day for a year. A year of my life documented. Pretty cool when you think about it. When I’m 80 I can go back and read this to see what I was like at 16.

Then I thought to myself: I could still quit, we’re in the 6th month of the year. I never told my readers that the goal was to go for a year, so what they don’t know won’t hurt them. How about 6 months?

Then I thought to myself: What readers? I’m really just doing this to prove to myself that I can make a commitment and stick to it. If I quit now, what was the point?

Then I thought to myself: good point.

NOT GIVING UP.

Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for a short vacation. I’m bringing my computer, but odds are I won’t get any internet where I’m going. I’m hoping to be able to blog, it might just not be possible. I’m going to stay in a cabin with the family from Sunday through Wednesday.

I actually have a little demo that I want to share with you guys. This song doesn’t have any guitar in it, and a lot of it was improvised on the keyboard and the drums. It’s called “Glow In The Dark.”

I’m planning on putting guitar to it, but I’m not sure what I should do with the guitar. I can’t think of any places that the guitar should go, or how big of a role it should have. So, listen to this song, get back to me, and I’ll finish it when I get back.

“Glow In The Dark”
http://boomp3. com/listen/bzglyuh

I had two friends come over yesterday (that’s why I forgot to blog), and at about 1 in the morning, after playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl for hours, we made out own way to play. Two people will be using Gamecube controllers, and one will be using a Wii Remote & Nunchuck (or whatever controller he’s worst with), and then you’ll have one computer player. You’re going to need to make 3 new “profiles,” or names for this Brawl.

Make a new name called “Blind,” one called “Foot,” and one called “Screw.” Whoever is “Blind,” is always Sonic, whoever is “Screw,” is always Ice-Climbers, and whoever is Foot is always Olimar. In this mode, the 3 players will take turns being Screw, Foot, and Blind.

Whoever is Blind/Sonic, has to use a Wavebird Controller or a Gamecube controller with an extension cord, and has to play the game while facing away from the television, using only his ears to tell where he is and if he’s hitting anyone.

Whoever is Foot/Olimar, obviously sits the Gamecube controller in front of him and plays only with his feet.

But Screw/Ice-Climbers is the fun character. Whoever is going to be Screw has to leave the room, while the other players go into “Options,” and change his control scheme to whatever they think would screw him up the most. He cane come back in the room when they’re done, and then it’s almost time to Brawl.

Now, set up a computer character, who is always Mr. Game & Watch, always on level 1. Set the rules on a 2-minute time match. Let Screw and Foot agree on what stage to play at, and do not tell Blind where it is. After the Brawl is over, save the video to your Wii and let Blind and the rest of the players watch it back. I can almost guarantee that it’ll be a riot.

This mode will probably be funniest if played past midnight, when everything’s funny, though.

It’s the 21st of February, and I get ungrounded on the 29th. Not a whole lot has been going on since I got grounded. Lately I’ve been spending my nights playing Star Fox 64 until the late hours of the night, since my mom hasn’t realized that I still have my Nintendo 64. The guy that I bought the game from had a brother that was really really good at it, and I can’t beat any of his high scores.

Another thing is that I finally got a turntable yesterday, which is awesome. I asked for a record player for Christmas and didn’t get it, so now I can finally play all my parents’ record collection. I have a feeling that the turntable will be a big center of attention for my photography, so after the 29th, be expecting a lot of cool pictures of that.

I’ll probably be pretty addicted to my camera once I get it back. I also have a lot of videos that I took a long time ago I was planning on uploading before I got grounded. I’ll try and get those up soon. Some are humor and some are videos of my friends band.

Man I can’t wait for the 29th.

So he lied about bringing it. After numerous attempts at begging and getting him to bring the paper, he finally agreed, but he thought that he could get one last laugh in before he gave it back.

He went home and, having a copier at his house, he photocopied my paper, and brought both copies to school the next day. So, I was relieved he kept his word when I saw him take the paper out of his binder. Little did I know that the paper he was giving me was the copy. He handed it to me, and when I reached to take it, he ripped it up in my face.

I thought it was the real one, and I just lost it. I intended to kind of hit him over the head in kind of a “what the heck did you do that for?” kind of deal, but I didn’t know what was going on until after it happened, and I had punched him in the nose, and he started bleeding all over. Me and Keith were friends, so I actually felt bad about what I did, and I went with him to the bathroom to help him clean up the blood. I apologized more times than I can count, and I told him that I didn’t mean to hurt him and said “no hard feelings,” to which he replied, “yeah.”

I told my geometry teacher what happened, to be fair, and I told the truth about everything, and he acted like he was letting it slide. Everything was fine. I went home and everything was normal for a few hours, until the phone rang.

It was Keith’s mom. This was bad. Apparently Keith has a lot of nose problems and when he got in the car, he was sniffing a lot and his mom asked what was wrong. He told her everything, EXCEPT the stuff that he did to provoke me. So his mom must still think that I just hit him for no reason. She called my mom and told her what *happened*.

My parents went ballistic, even after I told them my side of things. So I got grounded for the rest of the month of February. They took my camera, my Wiimotes (so I can’t even turn my Wii on), my laptop (and banned all computer privelleges), and my iPod. The same day that three of my new CDs came in the mail.

I eventually got suspended, because my teacher had to file a report, or he might lose his job. I was out for two days, but because of snow days and Presidents’ Day, I was out for a total of 7. Now I’m back in school, and I’ll be able to blog every weekday, as long as these Macs aren’t bugging out on me. I’m really glad to be back at school, because this is my only medium of escape now, thanks to good ol’ grounding. See you tomorrow.

But I didn’t mean to. All of the days that I wasn’t suspended we got out of school for snow, so I haven’t been able to write blogs from Homeroom class. So I’m secretly blogging right now. Anyway, this whole grounding/suspension thing really bites. I have to go.

I’m suspended from school today and tomorrow, and I got my Wii taken away, so I will probably have to miss a blog tomorrow, and I’ll have to finish my story about why I’m in trouble on Thursday.

Blogging on Wii is what I’m currently doing, and let me inform you that it’s no picnic. That is all.That took about 10 minutes to type.us I need to look into getting a keyboard for this thing.

It seems like at least once a year I get in trouble really bad for something minor but blows up into something major. I am now in a lot worse trouble than I have been for the last few days and now I’ll robably be a crappy bloggert for a good while. I don’t really have time to write tonight seeing as I’m at a friends house and he’s leaning over my shoulder reading out loud every word I type as I type it, but I’ll be sure to give you the whole story behind my grounding tomorrow. It’s kind of a long story. But as of now I am grounded indefinitely from my iPod, camera, laptop, and hopefully not but possibly soon, Wii, and my best bet at when I’ll get all that back will be at the end of February. Which will make weekend blogging very difficult and will drive me insane. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. The only thing I’m sincerely worried about is if I’ll be able to go to The Mars Volta show. Well, got to go. Bye.

On April 5th, I will finally get the chance to see The Mars Volta in concert. It’s been proven that if The Mars Volta comes to a town near you and you don’t go, a part of your soul actually dies. It’s a science fact.The problem here is that it’s a state away from me, in Atlanta, GA, which is about a 5 hour drive. I might be able to convince my parents to take me if I drive most of the way. Mom says that the only way I can go is if we go to Atlanta for the weekend, and if the concert it even on the weekend. Luckily for me, It’s a Saturday. Check one. Now I just need to beg and plead and beg and plead some more to go. Tickets are $35 a pop, I can make that. Transportation is my only problem.On another note, I think that once I get ungrounded, my blogs for a few days will consist of videos that I’ve taken with with my camera in the last few days. I have some funny ones. See you tomorrow. Being grounded really makes you look forward to blogging.

I took a spanish test last week, and it was a two part test. The first part, we graded in class. The second part was us writing sentences describing pictures, and we did not grade it in class. Mr. Alva graded it himself. Please note that Mr. Alva is not a math teacher and probably should never pursue that field, because he can’t count.

 The first half of the test, I didn’t miss anything. -0. 100%. So I thought I was good to go. But then Mr. Alva hands my test back today and I have a 82% on the whole thing.

Part One: 23 questions (worth an unknown amount of points)

Part Two: 4 questions (worth 5 points each)On part two, he didn’t count off the full amount of the question, but minused 3 or 2 points from each sentence depending on how “right” it was. I got a minus two on every question. And they’re 5 points a piece, so I made 3 points on every problem. You know what, let’s just work this out.

23x+4(5)=100 

x is the amount of points that each question on part 1 is worth. There are 5 available points for part two, and 4 questions, and added together, they should equal 100. Right?

23x+20=100

I multiplied 4 and 5 together to get

20…23x=80

Then I subtracted 20 from each side.

x=80/23

Then I divided 23 from both sides. Dividing 80 by 23 gives you

x=3.478. Or, in test taking terms, 3.5. So, all of the part one questions are worth 3.5 points. Let’s put that into my score. I didn’t make 5 points on all the part 2 questions, I only made 3 a piece. So my equation looks more like this.

23(3.5)+4(3)79.994+12

ABOUT 92.

Not 82. I win. Mr. Alva doesn’t want to hear about it though, he just assumes he’s right and continues to ignore me. I hope you’re reading.

As I said before yesterday, I am very grounded. Is there a good reason. No sir. No there is not. What happened is this:

So, I’m grounded. Which is why I didn’t blog yesterday. And probably won’t for a lot of this week. I’m actually writing this in my homeroom class in school. I’ll be able to do one tomorrow too because I’ll be in this class for a good while. But for the most part this week I’ll be dead. I got grounded from my iPod too, which sucks a lot more than no computer because my CDs came in the mail yesterday, and I have 73 new songs on my iPod that haven’t all been listened to.:( 

I don’t have time to write a lot tonight so here’s a few exciting things happening right now that I’ll cover to a fuller extent later.

•  I’m thinking about ideas for writing some kind of poem or prose or something to put up here later.
• I just got done with a 3 day public revival at the Palace Theate where I live. It was an amazing experience and I’ve been starting to read my bible daily again and I feel so much closer to God. It’s great.
• The Bedlam In Goliath came out on Tuesday, like I mentioned before. It’ll take a while for it to sink in, but I might eventually review it on here.
• LOST, my favorite show, comes back on to start it’s 4th season tomorrow. Really excited for this.
• I bought 3 of those CDs I mentioned a few blogs down a few days ago on the internet, and they come in Friday. Gonna be sweet.

I probably left something out, but that’s what’s going on. I’m out for now.

You know, that thing where a dude like puts his hand out and you think you’re gonna shake his hand and then he starts doing all this crazy stuff with his thumb and you’re like woah man I don’t remember learning this secret handshake. It’s like half handshake half thumb wrestle. I’ll elaborate on this tomorrow, but for now I have to go. Eek.

Right now my main annoyance is lazy people. Myself being a person who enjoys a good “doing nothing” from time to time, I may sound a little hypocritical towards myself saying this, but right now I’m just noticing that people are lazier than they should be allowed to be. I’m kind of lazy myself. I’m pretty lazy myself. But, I draw the line when my dad tells me to plug his computer in while sitting right next to the plug. That’s ridiculous.

On another note, I’m back from Travis’ house and I plan on going to bed at about 9 tonight to catch up on my Z’s after going to bed at about 11 for the last week or two. So this should be the last short blog for a while.

But, as an added bonus of reading this blog, here is a link to my music mySpace! Viola! I kind of gave this out yesterday but I never said that I had a few more songs up there. Regardless, go to my music mySpace and check it out.

Even though I really want to. Sorry. See you tomorrow.

I hate different file types, and especially Apple for making the .MOV video file popular. No one has a mac. Okay, digital camera companies? Nobody. So don’t make your digital cameras take videos in freaking .MOV format, which is near impossible to get to edit on a Windows computer. Here is a chronicling of my epic journey to get videos on my blog every time I want to do it from now on.

1: I take the video, and the video is in .MOV format, unable to be changed on the camera itself.
2: I import the video into the My Videos folder, still as a .MOV
3: The first time I had to do this, I had to search for a good portion of my life to find a free, working converter that would change my .MOV movies to .ANYTHING_ELSE movies.
4: I then can use my .ANYTHING_ELSE movie file in Windows Movie Maker to add titles and edit the video.
5: Then I have to save it as a .WMMP or something project file.
6: Then I have to save that project file as a .WMV file, which FINALLY makes my video youTube friendly, but this video takes forever to save.
7: I upoload to youTube, normally an overnight process.
8: THEN my blog gets the video.

SCREW YOU, .MOV FILES! SCREW YOU!

I’ll be posting my Go With The Flow video tomorrow.

So, I’m really sorry for not blogging yesterday. I guess I broke my all year streak that I was going for. But it really wasn’t my fault. My mom took my computer out of my room before I got a chance to write it, and it turned midnight before I got it back. So, no breaks. That kind of sucks. I’m gonna try and make this an every day thing, though, no exceptions.

Since I didn’t get to blog yesterday, I’ll make it up to you by sharing something more personal. This is probably a bad example to show my writing with, because this is the first time I’ve ever wrote something like this. It’s less poetry and more prose, but not 100% prose. Also, it won’t mean anything to you or translate over to other people well.. Just so you know, don’t try and figure out what it’s about, because it will only make sense to me. I promise. There’s some parts that might apply to life, but for the most part it’s just things that connected in my head at the time. I wrote this without thinking, really. Anyways, this “poem” is called Non-Stop Congeniality, and it’s about a touchy subject for me, I wrote it last night. That’s all you get.

Before I share my “poem,” though, I’m gonna go ahead and tell you what I’ll be writing either today or tomorrow. I went to my friend Michael’s birthday party, and someone brought rock band. (Sweet!) No drums, which was what I wanted, and I wasn’t gonna try guitar cause I suck at all guitar-based games even though I’m a pretty good guitar player, so I sang. It had “Go With The Flow” by Queens Of The Stone Age, one of my favorite bands, ever. They’re really great. But, anyway. I think I did a good job. We got a video of it, although it’s all of the screen. You can still hear me, though. I’m converting the video into a format that youTube will understand right now. So expect that soon. Here you go for today.

NON-STOP CONGENIALITY
by Andrew

I had misplaced my options and became
stuck with this road
I’ve said it before a hundred
times too low
the number written on my arm
will be giving me ghosts
as the red 3 a.m. throws it’s
off-white glow
all the notes that had broke
this promise switch to anew
a greatest miss, a greatest hit
a figure of you
my pen could never erase your
badly-drawn other half of self-portriat
currents run, though my shining
hint lays away from the flow
a water molecule to drench my head in
to break my bed in, to break my bread in
it’s such a long story to be told
through my glass of the future and the present
your arm by your side mocks
the boat doesn’t rock
the paper doesn’t fold, just contrasts
more bold ink down
down down down to the other side
of that perspective shot of
a guitar that I used to write our baby
a lullaby before it became yours
if I’m ranting I’ll stop
if it’s falling I’ll drop
anything for love
oh, anything, anything for love
I have watched the way that it has
gone for years
the feet fear to take
another feat of nature
beast of nature, a kind of lord of the flies
type of nature
carpet cold, story old
story told to your son to your son and your son
the eyes go plop when they chase the
vault, to those who drop
I’m sorry for wasting this page
but now the goldest of ages is dead
a cable cord to plug my voice in
a dead weight to close the empty space
in my arms with
would that risk losing you
untrue, a glow of interactivity
system for your pleasure
pick up the weather
move it someplace else because my
scribble scrabble dibble dabbles
all the way down the
punctured scary evidence
scary slash sad and a thank you
a hello a goodbye an adieu
a french word for tough luck chump
lucky cussing tongue for a few seconds
I’ll take it back and get a refund
when I’m done, oh how I’d refund
anything or love
oh, anything, anything for love
and it’s red
maybe blue
I love

I don’t have time to write a blog today, or the clock for today is going to run out and I’ll technically be blogging tomorrow, seeing how it’s 11:55 P.M.. I want to have a blog-a-day for as long as I can keep that up, to keep it interesting in here. So, today I’m going to share 5 photographs with you, some I’m quite proud of. Talk to you tomorrow…

“around the world”

“if I recall correctly…slap organ”

“everybody dance now!”

“tock”

“strike to the head”

Every Saturday in January and Febuary, I sell concessions at Upward Basketball, which is a “everyone-plays” basketball franchise (or something) that my old church has picked up on. It’s my thing though, so I don’t have a boss or anything like that. I buy candy and snacks by the barrel-full at Wal mart (which is a store I hate, I’ll elaborate sometime) and sell it at my own discretion. Stick it to the man!

So today was my first day this year (I’ve done this for 3 consecutive years), so that’s why I’m not posting this blog until 6 P.M.. I made a little over $100 today, but I still haven’t paid off my $150 candy charge at Wal mart. You should see the awful looks on those cashiers faces…

As if I’m some deranged fat kid who spends his savings on Nestle’ variety packs? Good grief.

Well hey, I’m Andrew, and I’ve decided I didn’t like the way that the blogs in mySpace were so I made this site. I’ll probably use it to talk about music and games and things like that. I play guitar, and I like photography and take a lot of pictures, so maybe I can find a way to get some streaming music in my blogs or have a picture gallery or something. Hopefully soon. Well, I guess this is my first post. Later.

P.S. It’s 2008!  Welcome to the future.