Reviews, thoughts and frozen silence

I’ve realized that while people can do horrible things to each other, I truly wonder if one could ever say that the person committing the act is actually evil or malevolent. There are always reasons and experiences in the life of the actor in question that can offer some insight and understanding to his actions and decisions.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the actions and decisions would be acceptable. But I think it is important to try to understand people, whatever they end up doing or saying. When you manage to at least in some way understand why anyone would end up doing something, it gives you possibility to let go of your own anxiousness and lockdown, even if the acts themselves would be impossible to accept or be forgiven.

In general, I think life is mostly about learning to understand and accept your own feelings, thoughts and values. One could say that life seems to be all about learning to understand and eventually accept yourself. When you manage to understand others you usually learn to understand yourself better.

In my books, mental stability requires understanding. Usually problems arise from the fact that you are at a loss and don’t know from where are you coming and where would you like to go. And from understanding eventually arises possible acceptance, or at least possibility to change the situation if it isn’t acceptable.

Understanding and acceptance. Simple but powerful things.

I have been listening to trip-hop quite a bit lately, mainly excellent japanese producer Seba Jun aka Nujabes. After a while I decided to take a dive into the unknown and produced a four tune virtual EP Dharma Armada - Creative Commons as always!

Dharma Armada @ Jamendo.com

Hope you enjoy it!

Summer has begun and I’m enjoying my first true vacation as a teacher. Two and a half months of pure relaxation and bliss with salary. Have to say I’m pretty content And with happiness and relaxation comes inspiration! Two new Project Divinity releases for you my friends of ambient! Triosphere and Beyond. Hope you enjoy them!

Jamendo is a wonderful french hosting hub that offers home musicians to publish their music via Creative Commons licence. Publications are served via bittorrent. They have continued to develop the site and services, and now artists are able to publish their own blogs. I decided to join the flock and now Celestial Aeon Project, Frozen Silence and Project Divinity have their own project blogs.

No, I’m not actually playing the game anymore, but still thought there are some things I have to comment on.

As I have gotten older I’ve realized that it is actually harder to find meaningful things to do on your free time. I remember when I was under 20 and I could spend weeks and weeks without feeling boredom or meaninglessness, but those times are long gone. Now normal weekend might bring up feeling of anxiousness and sense of time drifting through fingers with nothing reasonable to do and invest effort and concentration on.

I think it’s sort of inevitable that people in modern welfare countries tend to have more and more trouble with free time. We don’t have to think about our mortality and necessities too much and have excess money and wealth to spend on whatever we feel like - but the question, what do we feel like is actually almost as hard to answer than how do I survive for people in much more harsher conditions.

I propose that when people live under extreme conditions where they have to put effort into basic questions - where can I find my next meal, how do I survive the night, the mind goes into survival mode where anything extra is just skipped. But when people live lives such as mine, where everything is safe and sound and you can basically do whatever you like, the mind starts wondering and very few things actually feel like anything special. You get used to things and you are looking for something different, something that brings up that one more extra edge to the general experience of existence.

It is no wonder that MMORPGs have become as popular as they have - my one active year of WoW was one year where I never had trouble answering "what could I do now?" - the answer was always there. Whenever I didn’t have any real life responsibilites I could log on and fulfil one more virtual quest or goal, there was always next one waiting for me in Azeroth. Add to this the fact that you were not playing just for yourself, but you had hundreds of people playing with you and you start to realize that modern technology can really offer people extremely addictive and robust environments that combine social aspects to enjoyment and goal driven processes.

But I finally decided to quit playing because I thought that it’s more worrisome to succumb into "easy answers" than to think things through - is it really so hard to find reasonable things to do on your free time? Could I channel my effort into something more productive than game?

Answer is, yes it is hard and yes you can channel it, but not very often. Most of the time it is insanely difficult to find something reasonable to do.

I’m not sure if I’m alone with my free time troubles, but I presume I am not. Most of the friends I’ve talked with mention that most of their free time goes to random browsing of the internet where you go in these kinds of cycles - you go to a certain webpage and refresh it, hoping that something has happened since last refresh. Not sure why you are doing it, it is semi automatic habit and you just continue doing it because there’s not much else you should or could be doing.

All in all my point is this - even when people get more wealth and safety in their lives, it just changes the way we think and feel, and even in this conditions, we don’t necessarily feel extremely happy or content. We just find different ways to make the worries and anxiety go away.

I’m not sure what would be the silver bullet. Meditation? Zen? No idea if there is a definite answer to be found.

But personally, I don’t want WotLK to be the answer.

I’ve watched a couple of episodes of Mad men and I have to say I’m sort of hooked. The series has nice rhythm, well written characters and interesting concept. As an added bonus, most of the female actors are incredibly beautiful, something a silly chap like myself can not overvalue! Not sure yet if the magic will hold or not, but so far so good. If you are looking for semi serious drama with nostalgia and sense of intrigue, you could go for Mad Men

Shinjuku Thief is one of those projects that go under your skin. Dark and brooding horror ambient with very soundtrack-like feeling. First time I heard Shinjuku Thief was during one of our role-playing game sessions. It was one-shot horror scenario and The Witch Hammer was used as the sole soundtrack for the game. And it literally brought the imaginary horrors to the room surfing on the soundwaves. I’ve never been so scared in my life. The associations were so intense that even now when I’m listening to the album, I get shivers down my spine. It is definitely not an easy album and the intense soundscapes won’t yield exactly enjoyable experience, but I still wholeheartedly suggest to try it out.

Project Divinity’s album Divinity got it’s first official review from finnish noise.fi webmagazine. It is sadly written in finnish, but you can find it here in any case.

As a summary I’m very happy for it, the writer understood the project and it’s main influences correctly, analyzed it honestly and wrote the article with sense of detail and warmth.

The album can be gotten either from Jamendo.com or as a physical version from levyvirasto.net.

Star Trek was originally created by Gene Roddenberry and it is one of the most important sci-fi classics in the media of film. Later many continuation series were produced that built on the same universe and from those series TNG is in my opinion the best. It is warm, mellow and hopeful. Unlike in Battlestar Galactica, humanity has managed to transcend into responsible and better beings and the series revolve around the concept of exploration and knowledge. Patrick Stewart manages to flesh out an exceptional character from captain Jean-Luc Picard - he has got to be one of the best leaders ever written. You could say that Picard is the series. He has the final call on most of the things and most often he makes decisions that allow situations to resolve without excessive violence or conflict.

Some would say TNG is too charming and easy going a series, and I’m ready to admit that, but to me, there’s nothing wrong in charming and easy. I enjoy the funny moments, small jokes, interaction between the characters and the way the crew works. There are so many exceptional moments in the series that it carries it over the occasional weak moments. Data, Worf and Picard make up the most enjoyable trio with the entity Q thrown into the mix. From those four such lively situations are made that I just can’t smile enough.

If you are into science fiction and enjoy easy going atmosphere, I recommend checking out TNG. There are some excellent episodes out there just waiting for you to watch them!

One word: cocksucker.

Deadwood updated the genre of Western into modern 2.0 version. It got a lot more grittier, raw and brutal. There’s mud, swearing, blood, pain and whores. There’s whisky, struggle for power, ideals and decency mixed with trauma caused by the hard times and world where everyone has to endure conflict and loss. If there’s one character that embodies that is Deadwood, it’s got be Al Swearengen played by marvelous Ian McShane.

Like with most of the HBO series, the level of production is top notch. Casting, scenery, the look and feel, dialogue, everything just works. Deadwood has divided the audience to those that hate it and those that love it. But at least it has the courage to take a leap into one direction and not succumb into boring middle that tries to bow towards everyone. Yes, there is a lot of swearing going on, and yes, the historical west probably wasn’t exactly like this, but hell, if it’s enjoyable and feels belieavable, I’m not complaining. After all, it’s not a documentary.