It took me a couple of days to go, “Wait, fifteen minute long wandering harp based compositions would have been better?”

I recently recommended just getting out of your home for whatever purpose and by any means. Today I want to take it a step further and say “go for a walk.” All types of transportation have their own merits but there’s nothing quite like a walk. I make practically the same walk almost every day which comes in at 2.2 miles round trip. And while it is the same it is also entirely different. On my way home, not five minutes ago, I realized that the reason walks are great is the same reason multiplayer FPS and RTS is great, although on the surface it looks completely repetitive and exactly the same, it is always different and infinitely replayable. There is a framework of rules and limitations that people must work within and there are classic tropes and generally accepted standard moves and counters but you never know exactly what you’re going to come up against.

There has been intermittent construction on my “commute” for quite some time and today I came across several newly set patches of sidewalk. They were still that dark grey color of wet cement but all the cones and tape had been removed. Those first tentative steps where I wasn’t sure if I would be sinking in or walking across

Sometimes when I drive (or more often, am driven) on the freeway I’m start thinking of all the other cars as setting and if I consider the drivers the feel a lot more like NPCs than anything else and then all of a sudden a biker gang drives past and I’m like, “Oh, nice detail, life designer” because it’s like one of those details writers think makes something feel authentic even though you hardly ever run into them in real life and then I realize that those bikers are actually real and they just had to think about weather to weave right or left there and they represent an entire life of choices leading up to joining that bike “club” and being on that freeway at that instant and then I realize that every single person on that freeway is a real person making their own adjustments and representing another entire life of choices that might literally or figuratively collide with my own in the next five seconds or fifty years and am kind of terrified and kind of amazed.

I guess what I’m saying is life is pretty much the richest game out there and you should stop playing the sims and take a walk. And if you really like shopping for electronics or whatever go do it in an interactive setting.

We are currently caught up in my day so this is shifting to just shy of a real time blog. I just pissed blood which kind of goes along with everything I’ve been talking about. In my twenty three years of living I’ve never done that before and I find myself with several options, call my mom and ask for her expert opinion, be a man and do nothing, or try to mine it for some comedic value on twitter. Obviously I’ve chosen the latter for the simple reason that I’m not a man and my mother would recommend immediate action, which I don’t really feel like taking at the moment. As usual I will provide you with the tweetular proof.

For those who don’t follow @andrewwk here’s what I was referencing

** This, I just added** I like to think he saw it.

“And all I could do while I listened to this dude tell me how punk rock saved his life was thing, Wow. Why did my friend waste all his time going to chemotherapy? I guess we should have just played him a bunch of shitty Black Flag records.” -Chuck Klosterman excerpted from Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs

**Original post**

Sometimes reality and our senses just don’t add up. Take today for instance, I want to call it a complete waste because I didn’t get anything done that I wanted to get done. In actuality today was pretty important. My health insurance expires today and I decided to go to the doctor and get something that I thought was kind of important taken care of. What would have otherwise cost me 160-360 dollars instead cost forty and the medication I was put on cost ten instead of another 150. I probably should have seen to this all yesterday because my insurance company is blocking the second half of my antibiotic cycle until they talk to the doctors, which will be tomorrow when I’m no longer under their policy. But hey, what can you do. After lots of discomforting tests and waiting I heard the diagnosis. It’s not that bad but it was still scarier than I expected and it started out with “You’re a young healthy guy so the chance you have cancer is like one percent but we feel that it would be irresponsible not to test for it…” At this point I was not really smiling anymore and began looking for things to do with my hands. By the time we actually started going into my medicine I thought the room felt a little hot. When I heard that it would last for a month and involved regular timing, I decided standing up would be a good choice. If there’s one thing I do not like it is remembering to do things on a regular basis. There was a little more information (about possible side effects like vomiting, blurred, vision, lethargy) and then I found out that while standing up seemed like a good idea, it was also physically impossible. My vision wasn’t in focus anymore (the medicine was apparently already working and I hadn’t even tried it yet) and I found myself clinging to consciousness for dear life pride. I would like to make it clear that I did not faint. I only practically fainted. I was aware of every long breath I took during that time, and was aware that they were taking my blood pressure; which, by the way, did not help to relax me. I heard them kidding the new girl about putting her to work her first day and wasn’t embarrassed at all. Eventually I moved over to the padded table/seat thing and I was rewarded for my weak constitution with some candy. Harry Potter parallels aside I did not feel much like a hero or even very privileged. The doctor informed me that the candy was normally reserved for children under ten, to which I replied that they should guard the trays better because I could reach the counter and had already taken two pieces before coming into the consultation room.

When I decided to walk to the pharmacy to get my prescription filled I spent quite a decent stretch musicless. It was warm but none of my warm weather music felt right for my mental state and I began to think, what if I did have cancer? What the hell would I play? I decided to spend the walk trying to make my “cancer playlist” and I decided that it was best not to have anything really introspective and nothing that left a lot of space for dwelling. Pop music would also be a bad choice because it would be mocking me with it’s shallow happiness. I have had a pretty stagnant iPod for the last few months and this is by no means and incredibly creative list. My room mate, Doc, pores over his playlists and listens for good transitions and cohesiveness; this is definitely not that. This is an approximation of my fleeting fancy and most of the time I listened to multiple songs by each artist, if not entire albums.

–> This sign means I couldn’t find the song anywhere and supplied the following track in its stead.

Here it is on Blip.fm apologies in advance for the shitty track quality on some of the tracks.

Arrested – Government Warning
We Live Despite Their Schemes – Ink & Dagger –> Newspaper Tragedies
Mass For The Dead – Torches To Rome –> Idle Heroes
Volcano – Turbo Fruits Every mix has that one song that just strikes you and doesn’t fit. This is it.
Building Burning (Re-edit) – Tyvek
Driving Through Natchez – Yaphet Kotto –> The Heavy Burden
Walking Disease – Trash Talk * Full Discography, with songs that are like 40 seconds long you could afford it
The Easy Way – Swamp Thing * All of Youth Is Sick
Dead Is Dead – Pulling Teeth
NYC – Portraits of Past
The Process of Suffocation – Pestilence
A Hole Into – Navio Forge –> Yellow and Fed
Assassins – Nachmystium
It’s Opposite Day, I Love You – Mustaphamond – couldn’t find a damn thing.
Born Dead, Buried Alive – Hypocrisy

Things that occurred to me later
Chancre – Grade
Tires, Tires, Globally – Get Fucked

Full disclosure: I’ve interviewed members of Tyvek before and that’s the piece that got me on TMT so they hold a special place in my heart and I consider Sam of Trash Talk a friend. I believe that 100% objective people will agree that both still kick ass. Not that anyone gains anything by being on a playlist I make but I nagged Sean Bonner about personal connections the other day and feel like I should play by my own rules.