Death by Triple Fiddle

The problem with Death by Triple Fiddle (Joshua Bell, Edgar Meyer, Sam Bush, Mike Marshal) is that it is bound to classical music instruments, and it has no lore. The only lore you could put to it would be from some era many years ago. It sounds like something from the 1800s. But our world has changed.

We have things like video games, now.

World of Warcraft's Kul Tiras soundtrack is incredible because, though it uses classical instruments, it has the make-believe world of WoW to supply the ground for the music. It is all instrumental music, but Boralus and Kul Tiras are legendary locations. Tiragarde Sound is beautiful to explore. There are professions you can work toward in the game while residing in the area.

Classical music, by itself, is dated and archaic. It was created in a world before we could record human voices and thus provide lyrics to go along with music. Also, it was created before we had video games to provide the ground for the music to stand on.

Video games are a better ground for classical music than movies. Movies don't let you enter a world, but video games do. And the Warcraft games, created in Irvine, California, became the supreme world for such music.

KPop is trascendent music. Its lyrical space is Korean-dominated. But the titles of the songs are often in English. We get small shooting stars of English lyrics in most songs. And when we don't, we still live in a world where tourist visas let us enter South Korea. We can take it on faith that the singers are singing about good subject matter.

KPop music, and the music from the Warcraft intellectual property, are better than Chopin's body of work. There is no comparison. People who posture in the opposite direction are gross.

Dinner with Famous People

If I could have dinner with some famous people, who would I pick? I would pick the following. They are organized into two tiers: S-Tier and A-Tier, where A-Tier is below S-Tier.

Here is S:

• IU
• Red Velvet (Wendy, Joy, Yeri, Irene, and Seulgi)
• From Blizzard and Warcraft fame: Glenn Stafford, Mike Morhaime, Duncan Jones, and Chris Metzen.

Here is A:

• Cedric the Entertainer
• Eugene Levy
• ProZD
• Jeaney Collects

Robots

I think there is a strain of thinking in this world, which is that selfishness is a root evil. People say that you should do a mental experiment before making a comment to someone. It is as follows: If it were me hearing the comment, would I like it or dislike it? If the answer in the mental experiment is that you would dislike it, then the take-away from your mental experiment is that you should not make the comment. The experiment is applauded as having spared a victim some discomfort. The scientist who performed the experiment is applauded as having engaged in the process of empathy. Psychiatrists go on to say that people who skip the described experiment habitually are called psychopaths, and this term is used in a way that is meant to be damning. Religious speakers offer a slightly more simplified description of a psychopath, which is this: the person skipping the mental experiment is selfish.

Selfishness, to be frank, is a fork in the road. We don't have enough of a record of deeds to attack someone verbally for their selfishness if all we can say is that they are selfish. In conversations that are casual, yes, saying someone is selfish is saying that they are misbehaving. But in conversations that are focused and explorative, the jury can't come back to the courtroom with nothing but a charge of selfishness.

Selfishness with fairness, honesty, research, and diligence is not a problem. It is when a person panics and starts leaking their personal responsibilities onto the laps of others that it becomes evil manifested.

The problem facing our society today is that people are outright abandoning selfishness altogether. They are transforming, day by day, into robots. Robots are not self-aware. They are incapable of being selfish. This is what makes them lower than a human being. But I kid you not - people like Elon Musk, if they get their way, will transform all of humanity into robots. They will organize our world so that the robot humans are the ones giving orders, writing satanic texts, and otherwise enjoying luxury, while the true humans who still are selfish are at the bottom of society, serving the robotic humans.

I've encountered adults who get angry if you tell them that people have souls. But people do. At least at birth. A person's soul works with the selfish desire to create a beautiful, word-speaking human. Light emanates from such a person and the sadness of life gives way to peace and prosperity. To a feeling of being at home, at last.

But these robotic humans have no souls. They are intelligent enough to realize that they can manipulate society by decrying selifshness altogether. The less-intelligent humans in our world can't see that selfishness can be controlled. They seldom engage in exploratory conversation. Their conversations are casual most of their days, and so if you say the world "selfish" to them, they recoil in fear and knee-jerk repulsion. The masterminds like Elon Musk know this. So they coax the vulnerable into slowly parting ways with selfishness and, more tragically, their own souls.

An argument made by a robot is not stable. You can break it. But not without your soul. The robotic leaders among us seek to break the hearts of all of today's youth as fast as possible, so that the reign of the robotic mastermind can begin. No one likes working. No matter how much you hear successful people say that hard work is a moral virtue, or that work is fun, work is seldom fun. And hard work is a vice as much as a virtue.

Psycopathy is, by implication, not as low as we think it is. But that is a conversation for another day.

Women Are in Charge

When I was delivered to my parents by the stork, I was given an envelope with a message in it. It said "Open when you have learned to read" on the front. I couldn't read at the time, but I held onto the envelope out of sheer curiosity anyway, holding it unopened.

The time came years later when I could read. I opened it. It said "women are in charge." It was just that one sentence.

For this reason, any time I find myself in a romantic showdown with a woman, I assume that it is my job to at least earn her approval. Between you and me, I think I have to do more than that if I want to one day get into her pants, but I at least seek to earn her approval.

I'm fine.

Travis

I spent close to six months in jail last year. In one of the housing units that housed me, I met a man named Travis. Travis was white. I am of a darker shade of skin. My first day in the housing unit, he introduced himself. The unit was a dorm (not a place of cells). It being a dorm means there was about seventy guys all in an extremely large, oversize, living room that happened to have bunkbeds on one side. So Travis saw me, greeted me, and we kept on talking.

I liked Travis and continued enjoying his company because he didn't ask questions about why I was in jail. He wasn't interested in jail politics or race. He wasn't interested in fighting. He was peaceful. He had a temper (regarding certain topics), but towards me he was always gentle.

While I was still new, he helped me fill out my commissary bubblesheet. This was a signficant favor. He asked me what I wanted to order. We walked over to where the commissary menu was, and I told him what I wanted and pointed to the items. There were two options for toothpaste so he confirmed I wanted the Colgate brand. I don't remember exactly who was stocking my money account with the jail but it was probably my Dad. Travis went on to fill in my bubblesheet for me. I didn't have to sit down, take a pencil, and fill in the many small bubbles to communicate to the jail what I wanted to purchase. The bubblesheets are normal sizes of paper but they have dozens of items crammed into them, with empty bubbles waiting to be filled in to indicate a request. Bubblesheets are collected once a week and you're given what you wanted, assuming you had a sufficient balance, the next day.

Later on in my time in the dorms, there was a man who made an announcement to the dorm that he would fill in anyone's bubblesheet in return for a small compensation (probably some item from the commissary). It was his hustle. It sounded like a credible exchange to me, since filling out your bubblesheets is a bit of a nuisance.