Fight Our Brothers Pt. 1

Another epic piece I have to get done. This is only Pt. 1. I'm for the most part done with most of the work on this one. I'll be working on Pt. 2 probably some tonight and tomorrow.

Rose of Pink

Taking a slight break from Scratchin' at the Door. I'm to Rose of Pink and writing for clarinet, bassoon, and violin. I'm proud of the intro, but it's a little cheesy. I'm sure some editing changes will be done. Just trying to understand how to do voice leading and how I can make it more interesting. If anything, the counterpoint stuff makes me smile.

A little something I'm working on. Check back to see my progress.

On Love From Afar

I can't say I've experienced the love you find between a man and a woman in a circumstance of deep and unchanging devotion, but I can say I have seen a lot of ways couples treat it. The only love I've known is the one I try to express through God, my selfish self, and those from family and friends. Lately a lot of my thoughts have been on the topic of love between people and how God plays a role in it. I can not say these are completely correct observations. In fact, a lot of these are mostly inquiries about love. So discuss if you feel fit to. I'm open to anyone else's interpretation and honestly could use a bit of encouragement these days.

1. I am giving up daily on the things I love. Is this part of being an adult or a functioning member of society? Are those even mutually exclusive?

2. One day I hope we can rid ourselves from the bonds of fear and preference. For me to escape these is to be closer to God and to loving all human beings.

3. I am so glad I do not have the identical love of Christ. To be human with His love is to be horribly and perpetually disappointed. We are lucky we are not God, but we are lucky and priviledged that we can learn to love like Christ did.

4. Most days I'd like to be loved for who I could be and not who I am. Who else feels this way?

5. Is it supposed to be strange that it is easier for some people than others to love themselves first?

6. People talk of love like it is free, but then are only happy about who they receive love from. What does preference have to do with love? How can I be more appreciative?

7. The Bible makes it rather clear that marriage is an expression of love, but moreso it is a coming together of two selfish people wanting to be exclusive to each other. I begin to feel the fears of Paul.

8. True love can not entirely escape the context of circumstances, but it compromises one's priorities of discipline and pleasure.

9. To talk of love is like trying to capture something only for it to escape immediately. I could be dead wrong about everything.

10. When is tough love too tough that it isn't love?

11. Where is the love ya'll?

Jurassic Park: The Musical

Really awesome to see my ideas get produced. I can't thank the people enough for getting this accomplished. There are more to come and to be posted throughout the week.


Jurassic Park: The Musical will be performing April 9th @ Hailey's in Denton, TX!

An Absence of Color - Beirut Cover - "La Llorona" (A cappella)

Strangely enough, I got inspired to do an A cappella version of this Beirut song from an episode of Glee. I just imagined the voices taking on roles of the instruments and thought up the arrangement all while in the car one night. I immediately began to text the female vocalists I had in mind who are just itching to make music in the Denton music scene. I can't tell you how thankful I am to have these people as friends and musicians alongside me.

We got the idea to come down from the stairs all sneaky-like from behind the audience so we could surprise them. I tried to keep it a secret. Even my bass player didn't know what I was up to. I wanted to literally surprise as many people as I could. It's so neat I could really see an idea follow through. I really hope to work with these people more in the future.

A song I've crafted. Credit is due to the Preston Haining, Carlo Canlas, and Robert Boler.

The Campaign Begins!

So, I've been working on an Ad/Promotions campaign for Jurassic Park: the Musical. I really love working with these people because they're letting me do such fun work. I get to do the more non-traditional stuff I dream of. These people are creative, funny, and I love them. I also admire the work ethic. You don't find that everywhere in an art community. Jurassic Park: The Musical has its first show of the semester at A&M College Station on Feb. 19th, so we made an ad for the A&M crowd. More commercials will be made later and other neat ads will be done. I can't wait to work on the new one.

Pedophili-WHA??

Thousands of people are boycotting Amazon for an electronic book being sold on its site. The book titled “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure” received an incredible amount of feedback of about 3,000 comments and thousands of other boycotts of Amazon.com until the site removes such a book. The author claims that the book is to promote the legal use of pedophilic action among children and to hopefully turn society in a much more empathetic view toward pedophilia. Today I’m going to discuss some of ethical and philosophic implications brought upon pedophilia and how it relates to this particular case.

Pedophilia from a communitarianistic standpoint regards it as unwholesome and even harmful to a child. Pedophilia is held with disdain for several reasons:

1. Repurcussions from both ends – Pedophilia towards a child is harmful because it can alter how a child thinks about sexuality. It can lead to perversion and possibly sexual abuse from the pedophile. It also leads to incrimination on the pedophile’s end and scorn from society if found as a sex offender. None of these things contribute to a balanced society which contributing to the wholesome values that can lead all of us to work together as people.

2. Pedophilia itself – Has been frowned upon by the Christian majority due to the fact the Bible plainly speaks out against any kind of perversion of God’s beautiful gift to man. Any form of pedophilia leaves a pedophile estranged from a possible community of people who would be willing to help otherwise.

However, Philipe R. Greaves II, the author, disagrees with the critics about the potential harm of his book in saying,

"I wrote the book to establish guidelines so that people would behave in a manner that is non-injurious to each other, for one, and, for two, to communicate the fact that these people who are so different in maturation, etc., that when they develop relationships, they use certain principles that regular people, adults, would be well to attend."

Kantian ethics says that the intent what makes his actions good. The author has stated that his intent is truly a pure one that should avoid all public scrutiny, but you to have wondered if he thought he’d actually avoid it. This is where Kantian ethics can’t be completely applied because it can’t be used as categorical imperative among other people. However, Kantian ethics does not account for the varying cultures and counter-philosophies that culminate our world. There is no end-all be all answer in philosophy other than the most extreme ones – absolute truth (religion) nihilism. This is why this book should be brought down. It doesn’t make any sense to have it up because the author’s book encourages the ugliness of society.

MY STRAT COMM REVELATION: I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT OMG

This Kantian ethic is probably the biggest thing that made me think in Strategic Communications class. War is purely a utilitarian action of saving one’s country for the greater good. So, while the greater good is of good intent in the mind of a soldier, or country’s well being, it fails to account for the intention of others and that war is not an applicable action for countries.

Criminal Tweeting

Where do you hide on the internet? Once again the internet police have found two other offenders loosely speaking about horrible acts. They called them jokes, but the lawyers say otherwise. With enough creativity, a flurry of typing, and one click of the mouse, you could expect to see yourself winding up in court.

Paul Chambers simply wanted his flight to be on time, so, he made some wise-crack about maybe blowing up the Robin Hood Airport if his flight was delayed. No big deal, right? Another man arrested was Gareth Compton. He joked about stoning a newspaper journalist with his message: "Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan't tell Amnesty if you don't.” – a particularly offensive comment with a tinge of racism. This is all in good fun, of course; however so, the law was not cool with that.

Both comments were twitter posts that caught the attention of not just their followers, but outsiders who took offensive to these. Chambers was arrestedwas charged with £3,000 for his offense. Once word got around to the twitter community about Chamber’s arrest, a twitter user quoted Chamber’s incriminating “tweet” in protest to what seemed like a very unfair repercussion. Compton was not charged with anything but sent an apology to Yasmin for his behavior.

These comments were seen as throw-away statements that meant nothing to the sender. However, given the times, the public is in a state of mind where people want to take the utmost precaution to ensure your safety. People can go to court for how their e-mail is presented to an entire company or group of people based on upon its content. Twitter is essentially a public e-mail system. I think what the difference between twitter and a message board would be is that one of them is essentially much more public. The venue matters. Just as one shouldn’t shout fire in a movie theater, no one would tweet murder on a public feed. It is simply disrupting to the public at large and can even harm other people’s reputations if done correctly.