Bibles

Everyone's got their own personal Bible, "that one" book that defines them, encapsulates them, perfects them. Mine, I haven't found. It's probably a dusty old leatherbound thing, sitting in a forgotten corner of a struggling used bookstore, waiting. One day I'll go into that shop. I'll scoff at the selection but I'll browse anyway, because something wants me to. I'll leaf through a few books in the Fiction section before deciding they're worthless and turning on my heel to leave.

Then I see it. Sitting on a stool in the corner with a hundred years' worth of dust and dead bees on it. I'll brush off the corpses and pick up the book- it will have no title- and, breathlessly, I will open it. The first page I see will be somewhere in the middle: it will be blank. Confused, I'll flip through the rest of the pages and discover that, yes, all of them are blank.

I'll sigh, disappointed. After all, this is my Bible- I had expected something amazing. I'll buy it anyway, just for the hell of it, but I'll forget it at a coffee shop a few minutes later. After I leave, the barista will notice it, grab it, and run out into the street to give it to me (she thought I was cute, it was one more opportunity to get my number) but I'll be gone already. So she'll take it home, discover it's blank, and spot a pen on the table. "Oh, why not?" she'll mutter, and write a few stories that float in her head, stories of princes and dragons and all the wonderful and terrible things she's heard and thought and felt. The next day, she'll forget it at a restaurant, and a friendly waiter will notice it, grab it, and run out into the street to give it to her (he thought she was cute, it was one more opportunity to get her number) but she'll be gone already. So he'll take it home, discover it's blank...

...And so my Bible travels. It never seems to run out of pages, and it has a habit of getting forgotten (curiously, it also displays a kind of aphrodisiac effect among food-service workers) and finding a new owner. It's filled with stories of every kind, breathtaking and dull, thoughtful and pulpy, hilarious and heartbreaking. And one day, it will find its way back to me.

Or maybe not. I did say "probably" at the beginning of that, y'know.

Anyway, I finished two songs! One is an adorable love song with some fun finger-picking. The other is about Lovecraftian horror. I'm pretty sure I am the most confusingly versatile artist in the world. But mmm, songs.

August Challenge, Reborn

So back in sultry July, Noah promised that the month-long dry spell would be just that: A month, with a promise of miraculous reincarnation in August.

August is now upon us, as evidenced by the ice on my (currently out of commission) air conditioner, and 'tis the season of backwards equations with letters in them. So, with heavy heart, I resume my Quest to Not Fail Highschool. Along with it goes the New! Improved! Music vs Math challenge.

The Math: One math course, designed to take a year to complete. Total lessons: 35. Completing each lesson requires watching the lesson, doing one worksheet, and taking the test. Test scores must be 80% or higher to "pass".

The Challenge: The month is August. I'm completing Math lessons, Noah is writing songs. Person with the most completed on September first, wins.

The Stakes: Bragging rights! Also, yes, my highschool diploma. But hey, girl's gotta have priorities, right?

And so, tugging my books from between Girl Genius and an article on how all teens are hopelessly depressed (oh, the irony), I trudge into a dingy motor home for my date with Gus.

Echo Bazaar

So, I've been playing a lot of Echo Bazaar lately. (If you haven't, go check it out! You need a Twitter account to play, but chances are you're planning on getting one anyway.) I've come to the conclusion that it's well-written, fun, frequently hilarious, staggeringly huge, frighteningly addictive, and very, very poorly designed. I'll get into that in a moment, but first let's talk about the game in general.

The first thing you see when signing up for Echo Bazaar is the newspaper headline "London Kidnapped by Bats!" London has been changed. It's sunk into an abyss and now seated next to Hell, and you play a newcomer to this "Fallen London." After escaping from prison, you are given freedom to roam throughout the city, raising your four skills (Dangerous, Watchful, Persuasive and Shadowy) and gathering wealth. The writing is, and I do not say this lightly, fantastic. It's imaginative and witty and in nice little clumps. I found myself hoping I would fail a challenge just so I could see what they wrote about it.

The mechanics of the game are similar to Mafia Wars and all those other browser/Facebook-based games. You have a limit of ten actions; these actions recharge at a rate of about one every seven minutes. You spend actions by... well, doing stuff. Pick a challenge, click "Go!", and you'll either succeed or fail, but either way you spend an action. The harder the challenge, the higher-level skills you'll need to complete it.

Now, here's the bad part. If you fail the challenge, you get one experience point. If you succeed, you get two. This is completely independent of the challenge's difficulty level. If you succeed a "straightforward" challenge (you will never fail a straightforward challenge), you get the same two experience points you'd get if you succeeded on and "almost impossible" challenge. This is, and I don't say this lightly either, bad design. If you take a bigger risk, you should get a bigger reward if you succeed.

Frankly, that's my only problem with the game. It's a free with premium content, but it doesn't force you to pay to actually enjoy the full scope; the writing is fantastic; and it's a great way to take a two-minute break from working or reading or whatever you're doing. I've been checking it every now and then while typing this. Even if you're not into video games, you'll like it; it doesn't require any prior skill or knowledge of the medium. Plus, it's by a small startup company who clearly enjoys what they're doing.

So, in conclusion, if you like stuff that is nice you will like Echo Bazaar. Go play it.

Howdy there!

Yup, my lungs have been tryin' to make like bandits an crawl outta this here throat. Good ol' Sheriff Throat can hardly keep 'em!

We been talkin' about things ter do wit' 'em if they do 'scape the gullet, what'da think?

*cough* Sorry. Take pity and forgive the ill. I blame oxygen deprivation. :P

• Sell it on China's plastification (you try spelling that) black market.
• Donate it to charity! Earn Congressional Gold Medal.
• Blow it up with helium and see if I can float!
• Lung golf.
• Shove it back in and hope no one noticed. Enter Ripley's Believe It or Not.

I am still taking suggestions, as well as 20+ pills a day. Fortune favors the brave, however, so I am back here proving the state of my brain and reluctantly... pulling...out...the........math.

I have to thank Noah for covering my @ss and posting while I've been out of commission. :) Unfortunately, while the Music vs Math challenge has indeed been moved to August and dropped to 30 songs/lessons... I still have to complete my original personal goal. Of 66 lessons.

In what is now considerably less than 66 days.

If it kills me, I entrust my last wishes to you. I want a funeral with brilliant food (Italian), great music (drums, and a musical number) cherry blossoms, and a female preacher. My gravestone: She Tried.

Off to start the wheel rolling again with lesson 11.

One and a Half Amps Later

One could argue that technically, it is only one amp, but there is enough awesome in it for an extra half. So there.

Now, you might be thinking that "Music vs. Math" could only be a good title for a direct competition between composition and computation. However, this is not the case- "Music vs. Math" could serve as an interesting, even poetic title if need be. The constant internal warfare between art and intellectual pursuits; in other words, just because you're an incredible artist doesn't mean you're exceptionally smart. "Music vs. Math" defines this conflict, and is also mildly intriguing for advertising purposes.

On a completely unrelated note, the competition is on hiatus. My energy has been hijacked for the last three weeks, for a variety of reasons, and so has Maria's. We're planning to reboot in August, aiming for 30 lessons/songs instead of 66. Much more manageable, at least (okay, no, it's less manageable but STILL). The blog is not on hiatus. I still need a place to bleat like a goat, hoping to God that somebody somewhere is listening.

One and a Half Weeks Later

Hey, all! Sorry we've been dry. I don't think we've been getting much work done, either. Over the last week and a half, we both went to the Unitarian General Assembly, then she went to HOBY (a crazy-intense four-day youth leadership conference), then the last five days I've been taking an eight-hours-a-day programming class and she's been sick.

So, in reality, a lot of work has been being done. It's just that very little (none?) of it has been math, and none of it has been music. Most of it has been yelling, either for enthusiasm at HOBY or at GODDAMNED UNCOOPERATIVE LISTS.

But! Music will be done. Perhaps an acoustic song in a Southern accent called "Feelin' Blue and Fixin' Bugs." Meanwhile, I hear there are these "moving picture" things you could go see.

Anyone want to count remaining days for me?

Little math has been done in recent days. I'm up to 9/66, which, for those of you who are counting and don't know how to use widgets clever people invented so we don't have to count, is 13.64%. This was expected, though, so to my darling Gus: suck it. The rest of you, I'll be offline until Monday being leadership-y and hopefully finishing up my 100 hrs of volunteer service. (Which I have had a year to complete, surpassed and perhaps tripled... but then never logged.)

In the meantime, I leave you in Noah's oh-so-capable hands.

Bring a towel. *

Maria takes no responsibility for any ensuing autopsies.

9 / 66

The different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. - Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland

-----

*First person to name the reference gets a free hug.

Mise en Place

"Mise en Place," Turtle Back Films' entry into the 2010 48 Hour Film Project, is now available for anyone to watch. Online. For free.

...Of course, I'm not sharing the link until the premiere this Wednesday, because Maria is not allowed to watch it without me. Ha.

And interestingly enough, the title is relevant to my life right now. Everything is ready to go to totally write some goddamn awesome music this summer! I just got back from an absolutely INCREDIBLE solstice event, and that (along with some other inspiration) has fired me up to create. So I created a song in the last half-hour.

It's called "Shard of Forever," and it's basically about not being afraid to take new opportunities. Which is a theme I really like to use. You'll get a recording at some point, I promise.

48 Hours

I still only have... however many songs written. My brains are kind of scattered right now, because some of my associates and I entered the 48 Hour Film Project this weekend as Turtle Back Films! So I spent the last twelve or so hours editing or doing other work on it. And before that I spent most of the day acting, which in this case meant screaming. And before that I spent the entire morning helping to clump together our main ideas into a script.

Summary: she has made no progress because she got sick. I have made no progress because I have probably made myself sick.

Progress, Of A Sort

The good news: I have a total of 8 lessons complete!

The bad news: I have a total of 8 lessons complete.

The other bad news is that I've been sicker than a corpse lately (Which come to think of it isn't all that impressive) and so seem fairly unlikely to complete any more lessons any time soon. I can hear Gus laughing. Can you hear Gus laughing?

..no, you're right, that was a belch. Over the newest can of beer.

8 / 66

"In mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them." -- Johann von Neumann

True Confessions

Truth: No math today.

Truth: I did this on purpose.

Truth: I have no regrets.

Truth:



Duck cupcakes make everything better.

We also made pies:



And monsters, which I sadly do not have a picture of.

Unfortunately, this leaves me with 61 math lessons to complete in 77 days. Double math tomorrow, so I'll be needing those cupcakes. I think math in general would be more fun with cupcakes. We could have a national frosting currency (props to @Juliet_Inc) and learn multiplication of cupcakes with stylistic variables.

5 / 66

I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally. ~Calvin Trillin

Carlos

*cough* Hey. So, both my end of the blog and my guitar seem to be gathering dust these last few days. Only not really, because my end of the blog is a concept and I've been playing guitar, just not writing. But that ruins the metaphor, dammit!

As you may have guessed, I haven't written anything new. But instead of making excuses or apologies for this blog post... Well... Today's post is a guest post from a vampire. He types in blood red.

Let me tell you a story. It starts with a promising young boy named Jeffrey Beckle, a student at St. Victoria's Academy for Gifted Boys in Brightwell, Wisconsin. He was a bright kid, usually got solid Bs in even the most challenging classes. He was pretty well-known, but not exactly popular; he was always too quiet, too poorly-dressed, too something for the top of the food chain. Jeffrey had plans, though. He was going to go to an art school in Florida, major in film, and become a Hollywood foley artist- everything was all planned out. Enter Cassie Stark.

Cassie was promising, definitely, but she didn't seem quite young. She had a habit of out-debating her teachers and, when angry, would give the most menacing stare anyone had ever seen. She looked at you and it was like the whole universe was saying "Shame on you, you piece of garbage..."

Jeffrey and Cassie started dating in senior year of high school. That was when he found out why she always wore a hood or a wide-brimmed hat on sunny days, and why her eyes were so dominating, and why her teeth were so sharp, and why she bit into his neck that one time and drank his blood before slitting her wrist and forcing him to drink her own. Cassie was a vampire, and Jeffrey became one too. Cassie being his sire, she was required to rename him, and so Jeffrey Beckle became Blake Luthor.

Hello. I'm Blake Luthor, and I'm a bloodaholic. (Cue laughter and applause.) Noah asked me to write this post primarily because he had nothing he wanted to say himself, but also to... Yeah, he didn't have anything for me. So I was left to my own creativity to come up with a topic. Have you ever seen a dead person trying to be creative? It doesn't go well. Ke$ha's a vampire, if you need an example. Heyooo!

Although, interestingly enough, that doesn't stop dead people from enjoying art. Hell, we're half the indie film community. And the rave scene, the metal scene, a lot of rock. I'm friends with a couple of undead JoCo groupies, even. We've been severely misrepresented in your culture; always the romantic hero, always brooding, always stealing babies and feeding them to our wives. In reality we fall into two categories: the fun-loving eternal partier, and the asexual criminal mastermind. And we're not evil, either! It's a modern world. We take the sick if we're really jonesing for human, but only the sick. Other than that we mostly eat extremely rare steaks.

I'm still not sure where I'm going with this. Is there a point? If you saw a point, let me know. But this is more than he's ever written for one of his posts and I'll be damned (extra) if I stay sitting here typing at night.

That Hiatus Was Intentional!

Or possibly I just didn't want to admit to consecutive days of mathematical failure. Take your pick.

Two hours of Facebook later, and I have exactly one test complete.

5 / 66

I have come to the conclusion that mathematicians are like computer programmers, who simply delight in confusing the common man. Proof:

"In scientific thought we adopt the simplest theory which will explain all the facts under consideration and enable us to predict new facts of the same kind. The catch in this criterion lies in the world "simplest." It is really an aesthetic canon such as we find implicit in our criticisms of poetry or painting. The layman finds such a law as dx/dt = K(d^2x/dy^2) much less simple than "it oozes," of which it is the mathematical statement. The physicist reverses this judgment, and his statement is certainly the more fruitful of the two, so far as prediction is concerned. It is, however, a statement about something very unfamiliar to the plainman, namely, the rate of change of a rate of change."-Haldane, John Burdon Sanderson

In other words, all complex math is simply an ego-stroking method of transforming perfectly good common language into something complex and unintelligible to all but the educated few. Deductions: 1) English is by far the superior subject. 2) For all that Gus may be the stereotypical "trailer trash", he is in fact a tool of the aristocracy used to crush the rest of us. I blame him for Stalin. And BP.

Productivity!

Apparently the "Enter" button posts things even if you haven't typed them yet. Who knew? Moving on...

I wrote two songs in the last half-hour! Admittedly, one is crazy short and the other is composed of fragments that have been floating around in my Evernote notebook for AGES. But still! I'm up to 3/66, and only behind by one now. Soon I will be providing a lovely dust banquet.

Song 1: Entitled "Overboard," it's about taking opportunities and/or suicide, it depends on your worldview. I was playing around with minor chords (something I don't do often) and it fell together pretty well, even though the lyrics could use a tune-up. And it could stand an extra verse.

Song 2: Entitled "Lazy," it's a composite of three ideas: one verse/chorus line I had floating around, one intro, and one chord progression that doesn't fit with lyrics. And there are a LOT of 7th chords. I mean a LOT. I basically threw music theory to the wind and went with what sounds good, which is what I'm supposed to do in the first place, so that worked out well. Anyway, it's about being lazy. Which you may have guessed.

I have been listening to entirely too much Owl City lately. Overboard is... well, the influence seems kinda obvious to me.

And yeah, she did throw a pepper at my face. I was holding the knife, see, and she threw it to see if we could chop it out of the air like Japanese ninja chefs. Except she missed, and it ricocheted off my face and landed in the butter dish. Proof that the world is awesome.

If at first you don't succeed...

...ask your sister how to spell that damn word.

Where I was planing to go with that was "make someone else do it", but I think the above sums up my mental state better.

Todays lesson: Coordinates, or Why Maria Accidentally Injures People a Lot.

I was complaining (a throughly uncommon state of affairs, I assure you) about the complete uselessness of coordinates. It was explained to me that coordinates are how your brain figures out how and where to move.* It went something like this:

"Teacher": Coordinates Are Important!

Me: But I'm bad at that! I'm uncoodinated! Like that time I hit Noah in the face with a red pepper while trying to slice vegetables!**

Me: Or that time I fell into that damn lake four times in one day!

Me: Or that time I sprained my ankle while standing!

Me: Or that time...

Me: ...

Me: ...

Me: Oh.

I then sat down to work on my coordinates. Though I doubt it'll help my coordination (See footnote) I figure it can't hurt. Halfway through the worksheet, I realized I was doing my coordinates the wrong way. I had the order of the coordinates wrong (Y, X vs. X, Y). Realizing my mistake, I went back, fixed them, and continued on with the worksheet.

You can imagine my ah, polite dismay when I began to correct the worksheet and every problem was wrong.

Apparently. There are X, Y coordinates, but there are also directions associated with negative and positive numbers. These directions and -/+ matter. I believe I do begin to realize where my coordination impairment may come from.

(Also: I bet Gus never has to worry about that, with his stupid fat stationary armchair. And remote.)

Needless to say: My total remains 62 math lessons in 80 Days.

4 / 66

Today's Happiness Score: C-

*I may be a mathematical ignoramus, but I do know a thing or two about the brain, and I am aware that this is not precisely accurate. But go with it, because I didn't say it. :P

**True story.

"Do not worry too much about your difficulties in mathematics, I can assure you that mine are still greater." -- Albert Einstein

The Rut

As it happens, I seem to be in a rut so far. A music rut. I can't get motivated, or I can't get lyrics to match a song... All I have so far is a few guitar riffs and the song about the fisherman.

So why? I think it's partially because I'm tired, and partially because I just need to work at it more. Caffeine helps both those things. So: more coffee when I'm working on music! Another reason is I think I'm just getting a little tired of guitar, and I haven't done anything synth- or flute- or other-things-related in a while. I think I'll get back on GarageBand later today to fix that problem.

Another idea: I usually fit lyrics to an already-existing melody, as opposed to the other way around. Maybe I should try fitting a melody to lyrics? But I can't write lyrics without a tune, or a rhythm... it's just how I work. Which seems like it's only more reason to try doing it the other way. But the other way is hard! I dunno.

Summary of today so far:

-Oversleeping

-Hanging out with cool people

-Hanging out with more cool people in preparation for a Unitarian General Assembly panel

-Yard work

-Blogging (aka procrastinating)

And now I will drink a Cherry Pepsi, play some Dwarf Fortress, and hopefully the caffeine will get me moving again.

(Oh, and I might watch this clip. You're welcome.)

Attendance Score: D

Yup, you guessed it: No math today. That tragedy brings us to 62 tests in 81 days, and gives my poor challenge partner a chance to catch up. ;)

I think in may ways, math is like life. You don't realize just what a joy, or misery, it is until you've stepped away from it. Ten points for the first person to guess what my realization was.

4 / 66

Today's Happiness Score: A

"There are two ways to do great mathematics. The first is to be smarter than everybody else. The second way is to be stupider than everybody else -- but persistent." -- Raoul Bott

Productivity and Friendship

Productivity would be falling, had it ever existed. Summary of today: oh my I am a very tired man.

I do have that one song written, though! And there's a story behind it, so today's update will be about that. Once upon a time, I was IMing with a friend of mine and she expressed her displeasure about her ex-boyfriend. What she said was something along the lines of "I miss the Evan of three months ago." And then she asked me to tell her a story.

So I told her a story about a fisherman who made his living with the hook. Every day, when the fishing was done, he would roll up his line, stare out into the water, and let a single tear fall to the waves. A small girl observed this practice, and she asked him, "Sir, why do you cry at the end of every day?"

"Because I am sad," replied the fisherman. "Long ago, I married the most amazing woman I had ever met; I was so in love with her as to be blind to everything else. We bought a house, and had two sons, and every day she would make dinner for them and wait faithfully for me to come home. But now that woman, my lovely bride, is gone."

"Oh," said the girl quietly as she processed this information. "How did she die?"

"Die?" The fisherman laughed mournfully. "She didn't die. She's back in my house right now, making dinner for our two sons and waiting faithfully for me to come home."

I've never been able to really recapture that story, and neither of us remembered to save the chatlog. In fact, the way it's written above is probably pretty suckish and worth nothing to anyone except me and her, and the song is only slightly better. But I don't care, because it's not even about capturing the story; it's about capturing that moment, between me and a friend, when we sat around the electronic campfires of our monitors and found companionship in lines of text on a screen.

Days Remaining: 82 Maths Remaining: 62

I broke my cardinal rule and did a little non-qualifying Math. Is counting squares on a calendar considered Math? Gus is laughing.

As it turns out, there is an exact total of 66 math lessons to complete. Four have met with the slaughter: 62 remain. 82 days. It's sort of like walking across a river on stepping stones, until you realize the river is a resurrected Saber-Tooth, and you're just repelling towards the tongue.

Today's lesson: It Was Simpler Before I Simplified It, Actually. Sort of like World War II, and electronic voting machines.

4 / 66

"Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means." - Henri Ponicare

Oh my.

Oh hello this is purple-text-to-the-max-man Noah.

Sixty? Holy smokes, that is intimidating enough to get me to say holy smokes! I am now obligated to write two songs every three days. Oh well, that's just even more awesome then! (Note: I may die.)

Unlike her, I am not attempting to climb into the lap of some godforsaken downtrodden man. No, instead I have entered a partnership with my internal bard. He travels throughout my psyche, finding bits he likes and composing melodies about them, and when all is said and done he returns to King Brain's Court and recites these melodies to him. My internal bard is usually pretty laid-back, however, and Gus is probably pretty similar to him these days. He puts out what, a new song every couple of weeks? And I give him food, shelter, and the occasional ethereal sixpence. Well, not anymore, bardy-boy, you are going to work for your keep now! I need him, and he needs me to get back to who he once was: a brilliant, attractive young man whom my feminine side held a burning love for. ...Let's not explore this metaphor any deeper than that.

She has a neat widget! I want a neat widget. Damn HTMLers. *pout*

Progress: 1/60

A farewell...

...to all things bright and beautiful. This is Maria (pink text, and oh my this is a nauseating pink).

I am, for the first time in my life, rooting for Math to win. Well. I'm wanting me to win, really, but through a strange turn of events I find myself on the same side of a challenge as Math.

In my mind, Math is actually Gus, a large balding man with a dirty wifebeater and an armchair. He's surrounded by empty chip bags, beer cans, and starving cats. His favorite channel is X: aka Misery. Gus and I have a long history of angst. I am one of those starving cats, and this is my humble quest to claw my way up his unbathed arms and sit on his head.

A few basics: The math courses are Algebra 1 and Algebra 2. I am leaving out my grade, as it's mortifying.

There are, actually, 60 lessons to complete between now and September first. Each lesson is designed to take a week. In short, I am doomed and Noah is in for a LOT more song writing than he realized.

Cheerio!

3 / 60

The Challenge

First off, this is a blog with two authors. When you see purple text, that means Noah is writing (that's me!), and pink means Maria (who is not actually typing this).

The challenge! Maria happens to be homeschooled, and due to a variety of unfortunate happenings she has to complete two math curriculums in the summer. That comes out to around 30 tests, for those of you who're counting. To help motivate her, I offered to write a song for every test she has to take. This has been deemed, in my head, as the Music vs. Math Summer Challenge.

This blog is basically for her to angst and me to gloat. Also for me to post music, so if you like good music you should keep reading! You like good music, yes? Yes. I'm glad we have an understanding.