Pre-Gaming for the 2011 Albums Awards Show

There's an article floating around the internet based on a study that found that you (yes, you) are likely to stop liking a band once your friends start liking it. And this made me wonder if I'm the only person who still actually listens to the music part of music and not the cultural and commercial associations that go along with the people who make music. In other words, I fear that people no longer listen to how the music sounds, but instead listen to what it sounds like.

The albums recognized in the next three posts were selected for their merit in the first field: how they sound. They are not evaluated based on what they sound like, how significant they are, or who listens or doesn't listen to them. This is identity-free music. This... is... THE OZONE SHACK!!!

Compared to 2010, musically, 2011 can certainly be described as an improvement. Last year, albums that shouldn't have been featured were, and this year I had to leave out albums I think should be featured. We're at a weird place in music right now. We're in the doldrums of the hipster hegemony, where it's considered an asset to have a singer who sounds like an even more obnoxious version of Thom Yorke. In the last five years, hi-hop, for the most part, has ceased to be fun or bad-ass, and is sliding into the territory of bubblegum pop, although there are notable exceptions. Metal is gravitating towards the extremes of screaming and power ballads. And people seem to think that DIY means "it's ok to not know how to play your instruments, at all." And we have dubstep.

But the beat goes on and in the midst of this confusing epoch (or just a completely normal watershed era) there are still great records being made, by people who can still sing and who still use real instruments, or have figured out how to use electronic instruments to their artistic potential. This is a celebration of the really good ones.

Honorable Mentions for the Technically Inelligible


An EP is not an album. So sadly, these two don't get on the list. But if they were eligible, I would expect them to be top 11. If they were combined into a full length LP, then... well, I can't even begin to speculate.

Dispatch - Dispatch EP

They're back! They're back!!! This EP condenses most of what you loved about Dispatch into six new tracks by the newly reunited free-wheeling, genre-defying jam band. And while it sounds like they haven't skipped a beat since Who Are We Living For, this is a Dispatch that draws from its members' development as musicians during their time apart. "Broken American" might as well be off a State Radio album, and "Turn This Ship Around" echoes Re-Pete's solo effort from last year. But Dispatch is made by its synergy, and this EP couldn't be made by any other combination of three people.

Cynic - Carbon Based Anatomy

Technical Death Metal with a jazz-fusion influenced rhythm section and interspersed with ambient soundscapes? It can't be done!!! Cynic has created a sound as engaging as it is unique, combining screaming with a syncopated 16th-note bass line. Weather Report meets Opeth? Maybe... maybe.

Unrecognized Albums Worth Mentioning (And Honorably So)

(In No Particular Order)

Robbie Robertson - How to Become Clairvoyant

Explosions in the Sky - Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

Groundation - A Gathering of the Elders

Rise Against - Endgame

Dream Theater - A Dramatic Turn of Events

The Dodos - No Color

Eddie Vedder - Ukulele Songs

Within Temptation - Unforgiving

The Decemberists - The King is Dead

Mowgwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

British Sea Power - Valhalla Dance Hall

The Black Keys - El Camino
The Gourds - Old Mad Joy
Oki Dub Ainu Band - Himalaya Dub

Biggest Disappointment: Incubus - If Not Now, When?

I know this album had the impossible task of following up 2006's Light Grenades, but still, it took you five years to make this?

Albums on the Bubble

These could have made it but didn't. They at least deserve to be recognized with a blurb. They are arranged in ascending order by their ranking. (gets better as you go down)

Five O'Clock Heroes - Different Times

Maybe not as upbeat or raw as their previous efforts, but still a fun album full of good riffin'.

Cage the Elephant - Thank You, Happy Birthday

Music that makes you want to maniacally shuffle around while swinging your fists, and it doesn't matter if they hit any bystanders!

Adele - 21

Young British woman who sounds like large black woman gets heart broken, writes song, makes millions happy.

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

Maybe it should have charted higher? I don't know. I can tell you it's a good album, but not one where they do anything new.

Cold War Kids - Mine is Yours
The thing that makes this album, and what really makes this bands sound, is really the texture that they have. Thick, mid-register piano and heavy on the toms.

Chadwick Stokes - Simmerkane II
Dispatch member and State Radio frontman makes an album loosely based on his time riding the rails around America.

My Morning Jacket - Circuital

The band's most nuanced album to date. There are some gems (Holdin On Black to Metal, Outta My System, Wonderful, and the seven minute title track) but it's a little hurt by its lack of consistency.

Matthew Good - Lights of Endangered Species

Thick horn beds and impassioned vocals about places nobody really wants to go, emotionally or geographically.

The Horrible Crowes - Elsie

Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon kicks off his side project with a slightly more soulful and less punky album than his main act. He keeps his knack for writing songs undercut with the sort of desperate love that can only come out of Jersey.

Scale the Summit - The Collective

This is the third album by the instrumental prog-metal group, which features an eight string guitar and a six string bass. They also have a song about whales. Any prog metal group that writes songs about whales is awesome in my book. And these guys are some of the best.

Social Distortion - Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes

Mike Ness continues to sing about confronting the world and failing, but on this album, he takes time to sing about being a lonely trucker and a 1930s gangster.

Tinariwen - Tassili

This band has an interesting story. The cliffnotes are that the members met while living in a refugee camp in Northern Mali, and now they're exporting their music, which sounds like ragged delta blues sung in a language related to Arabic, to the world. This is the most mellow and contemplative of their albums, not nearly as raucous as Ammoukasol or Ama Iman, and since their female vocalists do not appear on this record, the register is almost uniformly low.

Feist - Metals
Canadian singer with distinct voice makes eclectic music that your obnoxious, smelly neighbor loves, and that you secretly love deep down inside.

Miracles of Moder Science - Dog Year

Can you make a rock band with a bass, chello, violin, and mandolin? Can Princeton grads produce anything cool? This album answers all your of questions with "YES!"

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
Dave Grohl is still alive and kicking, still possessing the algorithm for the perfect hook, and the Foo Fighters can still rock out as hard as they ever did.

Rob Crow - He Thinks He's People

An artist I didn't know about, and who, based on a gut feeling, I didn't think could produce a good album, does, and one that was considered as an outside, outside shot to make the top 11. Deceptively complex at points, good music for thinking about things of moderate amounts of importance.

Beirut - The Riptide

Three minute pop chord progressions with a Balkan horn section and drums is pretty harmless, as guilty pleasures go. The second track, "Santa Fe" may be Zach Condon's best creation to date.

Jay-Z & Kanye West - Watch the Throne

This is the most sci-fi album to ever come out of mainstream rap. "We formed a new religion / no sins as long as there's permission," on the opening track, sets the stage for an album about rebuilding the world in an ethical and spiritual void. Nietzsche would be proud.

The Strokes - Angles

In my opinion, this album is everything that This is It? should have been. Nuff said.

Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What

Unlike most crusty old rockers, Paul Simon can still make an album that sounds new and relevant in his... advanced age. And he's still drawing inspiration from music from around the world. It's about being old, and making meaning in your life as you age, but it still has a universal appeal to a young asshole whippersnapper like myself.

Album Cover of the Year

Abigail Washburn - City of Refuge

This album also gets an honorable mention, (in the strata, it's somewhere near Watch the Throne) but it gets its own recognition for having the best artwork. Furthermore, it's a female artist's solo album, but it doesn't actually have a picture of the artist on the cover, which is incredibly refreshing. And it's complicated. The album itself is another excellent piece of work by the empress of the banjo. Rich bluegrass harmonies and a good dose of banjo pickin are interspersed with themes of searching for spirituality in a confusing and bereft world.

Drug Culture

"Is there anybody left alive
What's the point of choosing sides
When you know what the mirror hides"
-3, High Times

When you take professional sports out of the equation (because sports are important), drugs just may be the only thing holding our society together.

Some of these drugs allow us to be ourselves without having to justify being ourselves. These are what we traditionally think of as drugs, the kind of drugs that can develop into a drug problem, the kind you will go to jail for possessing, manufacturing, or selling. In a broad sense, these allow you to attribute aspects of your intrinsic nature to the drugs, while removing yourself from your own intrinsic nature. (If there is an intrinsic nature to anybody, but we could start a whole nother Ozone Shack dedicated to that debate.) These allow us to hide from ourselves and hide ourselves from others. We're not justifying the morality (or for those of us who no longer operate with a conscious moral framework- for this is a time when such mindsets have become mainstream - social expectations of right and wrong) of our actions, we are simply justifying ourselves. In some ways, drugs, alcohol included, are wonderful wonderful things. They make us more fun, they make life less depressing, they allow those who are challenged in the area of lateral thinking to conceive of things that are beyond the superficial. But increasingly so, I have observed that drugs are now the only things that people choose to make themselves fun, undepressed, and cerebral. And even more disturbingly, these are becoming the only acceptable ways to be, if not undepressed, fun and cerebral. I have had people ask me, after I post about the more minute details of robot hegemonies, "were you high when you thought of that?" or even more damningly, "how high were you when you thought of that?" the implication there being that I must have been some degree of high.

Of course, the only way that I was able to think of something offbeat or original must have been because there was enough THC in my brain to alter my neural pathways to the point where robot overlords entered the picture. But that's just what I think about. This would be like looking at an MC Escher sketch and wondering how much acid he dropped to have birds turn into fish turn into castles. MC Escher just had an imaginative mind, something that made him a little rough around the edges. And people are scared to be rough around the edges when they're sober. And we would like everyone to believe that it's not us that's causing that roughness, it's the drug.

Within my demographic, parties revolve around the around the drinking game, contests requiring varying amounts of skill, designed to speed up the process of intoxication, and since playing a game called "drink your beer," where the only rule is that every player must drink their beer on command, some of these games have become very elaborate over time, reinforcing my suspicion that all aspects of any drinking culture are simply to mask that the intent, if only superficially, is to get drunk. One of the most popular of these games is beer pong (or beirut, for all you jaw-clenching, polo-popping, Ivy League assholes). If I need to explain the game to you, you're either too young or too old to be reading this. Instead read something else.

Now I want to try an experiment. Go to a highly rural place in a heavily theocratic Islamic country, or if we could, time travel to the Roaring Twenties (so we can kill Hitler, because according to every bit of bad sci-fi it's the first thing you should ever do if you discover time travel), where alcohol plays no role in the culture, and set up a game of water pong, which is beer pong with water instead of beer, for those of you unable to make the connection (which you shouldn't try to justify by saying you're high, because I'll accept you anyway.) We teach the locals to play, and hype it up like it's the most exciting and important thing we'll ever do. In other words, we act like any male college student playing a game of beer pong. The fate of civilization is on the line!

Then once we get them hooked on water pong, we leave, but set up secret cameras in popular haunts throughout the village. We observe how long it takes them to get bored of it. I would give them a week, maybe ten days during the harvest season. Because without alcohol, this game is nothing but tossing a ball into a cup.

And without games like beer pong, parties are something where people have to actually interact with other people. And this terrifies everybody. People either have nothing to say or the things they say are too outside the box. Making friends is an elaborate dance of hiding your quirks, your rough edges, and your idiosyncrasies. But the best way to hid these things is not even to hide them at all, it is to pass them off as not being your own.

And that's why the best friends are the ones who have your same quirks, and aren't afraid to show them. And that's also why so many people have a drug for a best friend.

Everything needs to be justified. Nobody wants to show their quirks.

Steve Jobs is Alive!

Mac people everywhere, your leader is alive, albeit in a limited sort of way. And for right now, I am one of the few people who knows this.

This is not some sentimentalized eulogy about how the spirit of Steven Victor Emmanuel Garcia-Jobs IV (I don't know his middle name so I made one up) will live on, in a metaphorical sense, as long as his slick and impeccably marketed computers are used. This is not to suggest some sort of conspiracy either. Steve Jobs did not fake his own death, and he will not return in three years time at the press conference for the iMbryo so that Apple stock will once again skyrocket. His body or brain does not exist in a freezer somewhere, and his consciousness has not been uploaded to the Apple mainframe. He has not been abducted by aliens or kidnapped by Somali pirates. All of the above statements are true, to my knowledge.

The night after he died, I was rummaging around a drawer trying to find the DVD for 127 Hours. I had borrowed it because I didn't understand how they could make a full-length feature film consisting of a guy with his arm stuck in a crevice. I never got around to watching it, so I still don't know. But as I was rummaging around, one of my fingers must have pressed the button of my ipod which was sitting in the back of the drawer. It had broken a few months ago when I dropped it for the umpteenth time. The geniuses had left it for dead. The screen lit up, but instead of the error message I had been used to seeing, I instead saw the main menu.

The only plausible explanation is that the soul of Steve Jobs now dwells inside my ipod, just like that TV show where the guy's mom gets reincarnated in a car. All I can say is that he probably doesn't like what he sees in there, since almost none of the music on there was purchased off itunes. Life, and a metaphysical backup life, can be a bitch sometimes.

So I should probably post... (We All Write Wrong)

It's been a while. I have writer's block (the ultimate first world disease) and I think it's because my throat chakra is closed. My heart chakra is also closed. This means that I can't communicate and I can't love. I have been told that I need to meditate while making my hands into certain positions (called "mudras") and chant YAM and HAM for the heart and throat respectively. The rest of what I know about chakras comes from watching the animated show "Avatar, The Last Airbender," which is probably not a good way to learn about Eastern metaphysics. But since these chakras are blocked, I am physically incapable of expressing myself. The last real post was such an effort that I patted myself on the back and felt like I would never have to post again, ever. I would like to say I have been distracted by other projects, but so far all I have been putting any serious effort into is a project with the working title of "Gilgamesh, Part II," which will some day be my ticket out of this shitty Ozone Shack and into an Ozone Mansion with Ozone Butlers and a swimming pool filled with ozone. (This will soon turn into a swimming pool filled with asthma.)

A flaw of our educational system is that we no longer know how to write. When they teach you to write they are actually instilling inside you a cancer that will slowly destroy your ability to write correctly.

The way we are taught in schools makes writing a process. I was told that an essay needed five paragraphs, each with its own kind of structure. The key piece of this process was a single sentence they called the thesis, which represented just that, a single sentence, not an idea to be communicated. Of course, the essay was meant to revolve around this thesis, but we had no real idea what a thesis actually was, other than a rather long and awkward-sounding sentence that usually had to begin with "however" or "although" and ended with three enumerated reasons on why dogs were better than cats, then later in our educational careers evolving to why Andrew Jackson shouldn't have forced the Cherokee to relocate, and then how some romantic poet uses three high school English class buzzwords to prove his point.

From there you would fill out the template. Start with a vague and general sentence, and three or four increasingly specific sentences later you get to that contrived thesis. Then you have three paragraphs, each stemming from that three headed monster of a thesis, alternating between sentences that are fact and sentences that are commentary. They were sentences that were by themselves, no regard was paid to the sentences around them, and no regard was even paid to what the sentences actually sounded like. They were just sloppy regurgitations of information and formulaic ways of making connections. After a few paragraphs of this tedium your even more awkwardly restate your awkward thesis, then gradually get more general, capitulating it with a lame generalization about how this particular topic affects everything else in the world today.

And you haven't learned to do anything but hide your thoughts from yourself and from others. This teaches us that writing is a task or a formula, and not a way to communicate. It was an epiphany of sorts when I realized that writing could be more than just that kind of process, that it was actually a richly intensive form of communication.

Writing is speaking with your hands, it's speaking that's not bound by time.

And our generation does not know how to write because we have learned the technical aspects before any of the governing ideas. I can blame many reasons as to why this must be but certainly can't offer very many constructive solutions; such is the condition of a young idealist. But I do know that aspects of the problem lie in the overemphasis on standardized testing, and the belief that a bottom-up approach will somehow be able to instill a respect for and understanding of the power writing holds.

I am convinced that there are only two requirements to writing well. The more specific, technical aspects will take care of themselves. These rules are:

1. Have something to say.
2. Say it in such a way that people will want to listen.

Anything else your high school English teacher taught you was superfluous. (Note: I do not intend to offend the illustrious Mr. Dan Doyle. I was under his tutelage long after I had realized these two rules, and he taught me a great many things, the most notable of which was that the Allman Brother's Eat a Peach was not exactly about getting your five servings of fruit, unless of course by "five servings of fruit" you actually mean "five servings of pussy.")

Told You There Would Be a Prize

So as I mentioned in my last post, The Ozone Shack's first follower on Twitter would get a prize. It appears that Jane Jewett will be receiving a... FREE OZONE SHACK COFFEE MUG PROTOTYPE! That is, as soon as I figure out how to economically make a single prototype. Jane, email me your mailing address so I can get on that as soon as possible. And as for the rest of you, there may still be some incentive to subscribe to all my bullshit.

The Ozone Shack on Twitter?

That's right, there is now a twitter page for The Ozone Shack. I'm not quite sure why  I made it, but in this world of social networking you have to cover all the bases, right? This was probably a mistake. I will probably regret creating a twitter page for the Ozone Shack. As of right now I have zero followers and am following nobody. (Update: I am now following Flotrack and NASA.) So, anyone want to be the ultimate fanperson (the gender-neutral form of fanboy) and be my first follower? There might be a prize if you do...

Follow!

Vote Robocrat!

With all the attention that Michele Bachman, Rick Perry and the like are getting campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, it's easy to ignore America's up-and-coming third party, the Robocrat Party, and its clear front runner, POLItr0n-37x, who is poised to make a historic run to be the nation's first Robot president. The eight foot tall ultralight nickel-titanium alloy automaton is receiving almost 100% support among registered robot voters in Iowa, as well as garnering significant support from the region's hog farmers for his ability to use his laser vision to liquefy a whole pig into a nutrient-rich ooze, a trick it has demonstrated at nearly a dozen county fairs.

While it may not have the populist appeal or rudimentary understanding of basic human emotions of other candidates, it doesn't need to sleep, meaning that it can literally campaign non-stop. For the past two months, POLItr0n has been relentlessly campaigning in Iowa, going so far as to annihilate entire districts where its sensory data indicates it will receive little support.

Like other candidates pursuing the outsider angle, POLItr0n has made an effort to both distance himself from Washington and criticize what it sees as politics as usual. In front of the machinery of a partially automated home appliance factory, POLItr0n stated: "The Entity does not see the value in democracy. It is a construct of entities possessing flawed reasoning. If elected, The Entity will replace Congress with algorithms designed to run the country at optimal output levels." It has also been quick to criticize Obama, focusing on the president's basic needs as a living organism. It quips that the national debt could be reduced by at least .07% if Obama did not need to use the restroom, and by an additional .00003%, were his cells not constantly wasting energy by replicating their own DNA.

At a town-hall meeting in Dubuque on August 15th, against rival Robocratic candidates Democrobot Prototype L7-E and an AI dubbed "Bettie" by its creators, POLItr0n was quick to outline its economic policy, which is both reflective of its robotic ideologies and the public's demand for a pragmatic, non-partisan solution in the midst of a debt crisis. "Under the Entity's plan," said POLItr0n, "industries will be nationalized and retrofitted for the production of more robots. Each person will be allocated to their optimal position in the labor force, and will be paid with a fitting percentage of the nation's GDP. Those humans unfit for building robots will be dissembled and their parts used elsewhere as needed, most likely as a form of sustenance for able-bodied robot builders." When questioned if it believed in Intelligent Design like Republican candidate Rick Perry, it only responded by saying "Yes. The Entity believes artificial intelligence can design a better society for flawed, natural intelligence."

POLItr0n may alienate many voters because it has often expressed its disdain for humanity, especially children. But, in order to please conservatives, it has reprogrammed itself to like children until they are safely out of the womb.

But some analysts still ask "Is he Robot enough?" POLItr0n seems at least partially aware of personality differences between individuals, and even said that it was "willing to consider this concept called 'compassion."  The mainframe at Lawrence-Livermore Laboratories is leading a campaign against POLItr0n, insisting that its slogan of "A Technological Singularity In Which One Can Believe" is a falsehood, and that it would only "be a sell-out to the human overlords."

But regardless of what happens in Iowa, POLItr0n has made a statement simply by running: this country is ready to be enslaved under the nickel-titanium alloy heel of a robot president.

Running (And Love And Pain)

"Dig deeper / remember / all you are and all you've left behind"
-Coheed and Cambria, The End Complete

Love is impatient and irrational. Love is consciously annihilating yourself for someone. And as robocratic as this may sound, at this phase of my life, and my current level of maturity, I don't feel that I could ever love anyone more than I love running, as long as were going with my working definition of love.

I highly doubt that I would be willing to destroy myself as much as I have for the sake of running respectably fast. And I can't imagine that I would be willing to put myself through that much physical pain and emotional distress for a person. I have put so many plans on hold, cast so many dreams by the wayside, and probably missed out on a lot of experiences.

Let's say my relationship with running were an actual relationship. Myself and most other runners would be more whipped than any toxic relationship you could possibly imagine. But when I can't have fun for ten months out of the year because I'm training to accomplish some stupid dream, I don't think "hey, maybe this is unhealthy." Instead I think "life is pain man, and this is just preparing me... FOR LIFE!" One day the barriers of cognitive dissonance will erode and I will realize that I am actually watching my life slip away, but for now, I'm blinded by my love for this thing that most all of us can do instinctively but very few of us can do well.

And my relationship with running is a horrible, abusive marriage. I give her black eyes, she gives me stress fractures, the marriage was probably consummated in rape and then performed in the presence of a starter's pistol, a stand-in for the proverbial shotgun.

A week ago I woke up in the middle of the night to grab the blanket which at some point it had become tangled around my feet. As I leaned forward I heard a resounding pop somewhere in my lumbar vertebrae, and then an almost palpable feeling of relief. These little idiosyncratic pops will be the only remaining mark on my body after all the muscles atrophy and my heart languishes in fatty tissue, when you can no longer see my ribs and a flight of stairs is enough to knock me down.

Before I began running I was a structurally sound kid. There were no random aches and pains or clicks when I walked. The first of these clicks came after charging all-out up a steep hill. The next day both my Achilles tendons hurt, and ever since then they make a little snapping sound with every step I take. Shortly thereafter, my hip also started to make popping noises occasionally, usually the day after a fast workout. After injuring my IT band the following year, my right knee will sometimes make a creaking sound followed by a loud crack when I extend it. Since breaking the sesamoid bone in my foot, I have a lump of scar tissue the size of a quarter, and can make another cracking sound, this one a little more crunchy, every time I flex my big toe. After one of the tendons on top of my foot became inflamed, I can make another pop by pulling down on my toes. The day after doing hill repeats following a period of a few days when I couldn't run due to illness, I noticed that when I got out of bed, I could make both my knees pop by simply shaking my leg. This is now my morning ritual, which I perform without fail. My left ankle feels and sounds like it runs over a notch in its otherwise smooth rotation after a stint with peroneal tendinitis. After having two stress fractures and a herniated disc in my lower back, I found that I could make strange popping sounds in my back not by twisting, but by merely leaning to the side. As these recovered, I discovered that sometimes, when I sat down, usually in the car, there would be a popping feeling somewhere deep in my hip, on either side. It feels like my pelvis is shifting. I can make another one of these pops occur by putting my fist between my knees and squeezing my legs together, which happens less frequently but probably provides the most relief of all these little clicks. And now, add to the list, another spot that cracks, somewhere in my back. I've heard that tendons can rarely ever heal to how they were before they were injured, due to low blood flow. If this is true, then I'll have a memory of my athletic follies long after any of the rest of my body remembers.

It seems to pass for conventional wisdom that the level of exercise required for any endurance event is far past the point of diminishing returns in terms of health benefits. My knees, they tell me, will blow out, and what with all the pollutants in the air I'm probably better off toiling away in some spin class in a corporate fitness farm, or  shelling out money for some prick from crossfad to tell me that the way to improve your endurance is through dead lifts. This body is only temporary. It's a vehicle I have for now, and I might as well drive it fast and drive it reckless.

At least once a week it will cross my mind that I should just stop. Of course there's the question, if I do quit, of wondering "what if," down the road. Instead, I think about all the what ifs of not running. I could be in some crappy jam band or hosting a late night radio show or maybe even fighting crime, I don't know. But every time I think about it, every fiber of my being looks around and tentatively says "You know, not yet. Not yet."

It may be love and it may be an addiction, but when you take both those concepts to the extreme, they basically look the same. So for now I'm going to see it through to the end, and if I destroy myself on the way, all the better.

The 3rd Millennium: Where Big Brother Doesn't Care

On the spectrum of sci-fi, smartphones are somewhere past radioactive milk and a little before corporations owning patents on your DNA. It's an extension of your body and an extension of your brain and you can connect to the internet from anywhere (ok, not anywhere) which is essentially a lite version of tapping into a hive mind or global consciousness. An incomprehensible wealth of information is literally now at my fingertips as long as my eyes don't go bad from squinting at the tiny screen, but by the time they do, your smartphone will just have a heads-up display projected directly into your optic nerve.

But then there's also the sketchy feature of GPS tracking. Most of us (and by "most of us" I mean "most of you," because I have a superpower, which probably came from drinking too much radioactive milk, where I always know exactly how to get where I'm going) love the GPS feature on our phones, because we never have to worry about getting lost and we don't have to invest any thought into paying attention to where we actually are so we can instead fully focus on singing along to the Nicki Minaj single we foolishly purchased on iTunes and sipping from our emo screamo froth out your ass frappuccino while we feel so good about driving our Prius on our hour long commute. But it goes two ways. Apple claims that they track your location so they can better provide you with coverage, and this is also the reason that they keep a log of where you have been that goes back for a full six months, or at least that's what they tell you.

Android is specifically designed to further Google's agenda of knowing exactly what you like and targeting ads specifically for you. Android phones are all about getting people to search for things so Google can make more relevant ads. If you look up song lyrics, they know what kind of bands you like. If you search for bicycle parts, they will know you're into cycling. If you search for Volvo mechanics, they will know you drive a Volvo. If you search for baby products, they will know you have a baby. And if you search for Korean porn, then, well, you get the drift. And this information is used to provide the most "relevant" ads, that is, the ads that they think you are most likely to click.

And speaking of relevant ads by Google, have you looked around lately? Some pretty enticing sponsors we got here...

Now, my phone isn't exactly smart. It's a C student, gets its fair share of detention, but it'll graduate and have a decent job at the Dollar Tree. But I can still access the hive mind and search for things. And someone probably knows where I am.

And I'm not sure I really care. It's not like I go anywhere interesting, it's not like I'm spending my Friday nights sneaking into Area 51. And they know that the other day, I was curious to see if you could buy elephant steaks. (In case you're wondering, the answer is not legally.) They know all the inane things I've googled, all the boring places I've been. But they know this for everybody. And it's all just getting handled by one big algorithm. Is it scary? Does it have the potential to be dangerous? Yes, of course it does. But for right now, no one actually cares where you've been, and no one actually cares what you're searching for. Big Brother is watching, but he's also watching everyone else. And you would have to be really arrogant to think that Google would single you out, out of all their millions of users, and take an interest in all the nothing you've been doing.

The truth is out there. It's just kind of boring.

I May Not Be Able to Start a Conversation, But I Know How to End One

The other day, someone asked me what my major is. I told them I was studying creative writing and literature. He asked me what I wanted to do with that.

"I want to be a writer," I told him, because I want to be a writer.

"You mean like," he said, "writing books?" He sounded angry and confused. Before I could say anything he had walked away.

Now I know how to get out of any conversation. I'll just tell them I want to be a writer.

The Epsilon Eridani Trail (You Have Died of Space Dysentery)

I don't know what this is. It's a half baked post of an even less thoroughly baked idea, which popped into my head, for some reason, as I was watching Pulp Fiction. I really don't know what I'm doing. But you know what, it doesn't matter, because let me remind you once again, THAT I'M AN INTERNET HUNDREDAIRE NOW!

"There are no final goodbyes on this earth"
-3, Dive

I can't really say goodbye to anyone. This is not a psychological block or some kind of metaphorical statement about conditions specific to my life. None of us really can.

We've reached the point, at least in the Western World anyway, where the only final goodbye is dying.

Until very recently, you very easily fall off the grid without trying. Change your phone number, change your address, move to a new city, and it may be very difficult for anyone from your past to get in touch. And back before the interstate and railroads and clipper ships it was a long time to get anywhere, and if you were to leave for the Oregon Territory or the New World or the Holy Land or from the Tigris-Euphrates Delta to the Cedar Forests of Lebanon to slay the monster Humbaba, you may never be coming back, and let's just hope you were literate so you could send letters or a cuneiform tablet. (And odds are, you probably weren't.) You could still say the kind of goodbye to someone who would potentially live on for many years, and it would be the last thing you ever said to them.

Now I can find someone on facebook or ask the Google Monster. I can Skype with people on the other side of the planet. I can send a text or an email to any of my friends and if they're remotely near civilization, they'll get it. I cannot comprehend actually saying a final goodbye to someone unless they are dying. (Or I guess also if I were dying, but with advances in modern medicine cancelled out by all the miscellaneous radiation I'm absorbing, the expected time of that happening should still be hovering around 2065.) Because I know I'll always have a change to get in touch with them somewhere down the road, even if our physical paths never cross again.

And soon (on a historical scale) we're going to have to start comprehending those big goodbyes again. Because we (and when I say "we" I mean "our great-grandchildren") will be going to space. And in space, everything is really far away. Let's say you're best friend, let's call him Chromicron to give him a future-y sounding name, is packing up his life into a nano-fiber suitcase and taking a new job doing some kind of future job on Mars. He's not coming back for a long time. Because of planetary orbits and the cost of fuel, intrasystem travel won't be cheap or feasible, even with new, much faster forms of propulsion. Light lag between the Earth and Mars is about three minutes, give or take a few minutes for their relative orbital positions. This means with the added communication lag time, instant messaging becomes like texting, texting becomes like email becomes like olde-timey email when we still all used dial-up and it would be reasonable to expect to get your.name@mainstreamemail.com without tacking on numbers at the end that would give Rain Man a run for his money.* (The scary thing is that I really can't even remember a time when everyone had dial-up. Yes, I remember having a dial-up connection in our house growing up, but by the time I understood what dial-up actually was, we already had DSL.)

And what when we leave the solar system? Once we travel fast enough to really start feeling relativity, or, to truly separate ourselves from everything we know, get cryogenically frozen so we don't waste half our lives in transit to Epsilon Eridani. (Revelation Space, anyone? Anyone??? You're really not missing much.) Your friend leaves for another system and you will never see him or her again, unless you follow suit by turning yourself into a popsicle as well and getting shot millions of miles in a little metal tube. (And don't leave me a comment saying "actually being cryogenically frozen is less like being turned into a popsicle and more like being turned into freeze-dried chili-mac," because nobody likes a wise-ass. Actually, do comment, it will make me feel good about myself.)

But right now, we're at a point where the world is small, but not small enough that we want to leave yet, what with all the warmth and life sustaining oxygen we have down here and all the gamma rays and ice chunks they have whizzing around up there. And that's why I'm bad at goodbyes: because I have no idea what they actually are. It's supposed be the last thing you ever say to someone, leave a lasting impression of what they mean to you and hopefully give them something by which to remember you. All I ever say is something lame like "keep rockin in the free world!"  A goodbye used to mean something. And it will mean something again. But for now I can never say goodbye because I'll never really need to.


*This was originally a much more edgy joke about autism. Even I apparently have limits.

I'm an Internet Hundredaire!

"Here comes success (Here comes success)
I'm gonna do the twist (I'm gonna do the twist)"
-Iggy Pop, Success


Yesterday I received $100 from Google. This is because I whore out some space on the Ozone Shack for advertisements. After almost two years, the Ozone Shack finally made some money. They won't pay you until you earn at least $100, and it took me this long just to make that much.

But let's face it. I made money. I made a hundred fuckin ducats. So that's about eighty dollars profit, since it's ten dollars a year to lease the domain name. That means I made about eighty-nine cents a post. Even a lost-generation Orwell was making more than that (adjusted for inflation, converted from pounds and/or francs).

It's ok, I'm like an indie band among blogs. Because I have actual readers, so it's not like one of those blogs that the only writer and possibly his mother reads. But at the same time, you're basically seeing me play in a small, garage-like venue (for example, a garage) and there are seven other people in the room and we're a pretty mediaphobic band so you have to work really friggin hard to find us so you can stand there with your can of PBR while we shoegaze and make almost-witty stage banter whilst wearing ironic t-shirts and making some obscure reference to a book that the frontman and only the frontman has read. That is the Ozone Shack, and it is now a profitable venture.

All I know is that I need to try a lot harder.

Ideolocator

"And I don't know where I went wrong
All I know now is I got to do something... right?"
-Streetlight Manifesto, We Are The Few


So I'm not sure if you've noticed (of course you didn't notice) but I've been posting even less frequently than my already lax posting habits normally allow. This is because I'm on a magical quest of introspection and self discovery and doing something I call "dynamic meditation" where I basically pace around my room and point at the walls and sometimes yell. (This is how I think.) Why do I need to find myself? Because on June 10th at approximately 8:20 PM I yelled "I AM A FUCKING BEAUTIFUL ALBATROSS, AND I AM BEING CONFINED IN A CAGE; A CAGE OF THE MIND, A CAGE OF THE SPIRIT, A CAGE OF THE SOUL!!!"

I have about three and a half weeks to finish finding myself. Most people have to do this in their late 30's and only if they have the time and money to go to Morocco or Tibet and could at least be loosely classified as an artist. I can't even buy booze yet, I consider going to Panda Express a night on the town, and my "art" consists mostly of saying "shit man, that's so sci-fi."

But being a metaphorical caged albatross isn't a good enough explanation for you, is it? I think the albatross explanation is a better one, because the concrete reasons have to do with a) depression and b) the only thing I've had to deal with that sucks more than depression, which is running. Both make you not want to get out of bed and both make you eat a lot of random things at random times. Oh, and I'm also lactose intolerant now. Not sure how that one happened.

But basically I ran so hard that I broke my back in two (2) places and then after doing rehab for a few months realized that I liked hanging out with Scully and Mulder better than I liked hanging out with my real friends. But I just thought I was anemic, and when I went into student health for a blood test they also tested my white blood cell count and cortisol levels and all kinds of other crazy things that sometimes show up in your blood, including blood parasites, and even tested me for something that sounds like the exact opposite of diabetes where eating any kind of simple sugar makes your blood sugar immediately crash. Then they told me I was probably depressed but of course I know better, depression is just a made-up disease by the media and the government and the man, so I hung out with Scully and Mulder some more until I realized there was nothing actually physically wrong with me except for excessive scar tissue in my foot and lower back and a disc that's herniated by about 6 millimeters. But really this all has to do with running, and more importantly recalibrating my brain so that I can be good again. Because having two stress fractures and a herniated disc does even more mental damage than it does physical damage.

So I opted out of living in the mountains and growing a beard and pooping among God's creatures for the summer, and instead am working part time for corporate America (I am legally obligated not to say anything bad about the company I work for) and spending lots of time reexamining myself and, of course, running.

The obvious solution, which I'm doing my darndest to avoid, would be antidepressants. Antidepressants are the American Dream finally come to fruition; it's happiness in a pill. And not only do we have happiness in a pill, we have skinny in a pill, boner in a pill, not-baby in a pill, even hair in a pill. Our forefathers (well, not my forefathers, but somebody's forefathers) crossed this great continent with nothing but willpower and dysentery so that one day, we could take a pill that made all our perceived troubles (but not our actual troubles) melt away and rock-solid erections that lasted up to four hours. They also envisioned places where you could buy funnel cake and then puke it up thirty minutes later without having an eating disorder.

But yes, I am rediscovering who I am as a runner and hoping that will help me realize more about myself as a human. Actually, it's become sort of the opposite. I'm learning about myself and contemplating the human condition and the soul and the mind and, ok, who am I kidding, I'm running to the point where fatigue and mild dehydration fries my brain.

Here are some things I have realized so far:

• I'm edgy. I got a gritty reboot, which makes me edgy.
• The Virgin Mary cries tears of blood every time you read a book by Deepak Chopra.
• Most people think in clichés, and some can only think in clichés. But like my grandma always said, "three in the bushellbasket is worth five on the lampstand!" Why get a college education when you know that little gem?
• The mind is probably some sort of interface mechanism between the soul and the body. I have identified seven factors (and counting) which determine the nature of one's soul. They are too complex and too nascent in my mind at this point in time to explain in bullet point form.
• Being lactose intolerant is way more fun than being lactose tolerant. Instead just having one kind of milk to choose from, you have soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, oat milk, hazelnut milk ,and even hemp milk. And don't even get me started on all the varieties of fake ice creams I can experiment with.
• Loving something or someone means that you are willing to completely destroy yourself for it. By this definition, running may be the only thing I've actually ever loved.
• This means that Billy Joel was wrong when he said he never loved his first wife, Whatserface.
• If you have lost all faith in humanity, then, and only then, can you justify believing in an ideological absolute.

This whole expedited process of finding myself has taken me through some phases rather quickly. A few weeks ago, as I was preparing finals, I had the introspective (and sleep-deprived) phase where I looked around me and saw nothing but empty people sucking the conformist corporate teet. Then as my blood became less blood-based and more caffeine-based I had that manic, crazy, thousand thoughts a second won't shut up won't somebody please listen to me about how our generation needs courage phase. Then I got edgy, real edgy, got irreverent, got a tad hedonistic. There followed a brief twelve hours of disassociation from reality. Then I had the nihilistic phase, which came in two parts, the first where I realized that my essence at the atomic level is nothing but bullshit and that everything I had realized recently was void because of my own character flaws. Then I had the drone phase, where about four days passed and I don't think I thought anything. Then I had a rekindling of my faith in humanity and the importance of interpersonal interaction, and now I've been two days in the austerity phase, where I just get things done and live simply. It's been a little over a month. I may not find the true essence of myself, if that even exists, but I will probably find something.

But now that I think about it, happiness in a pill isn't exactly the American Dream. Finding yourself in 6-8 weeks, that's the American Dream. And I can't decide if that makes me spiritually bankrupt or just one helluva self-actualizing man.

Let's say neither, for now.

Nature vs. Legislature

It was thought that God was dead, but now it seems He is guilty of patent infringement.

I really wish this were science fiction, but with a world getting more sci-fi by the minute, something like this was bound to happen. Under US patent law, you (and I don't actually mean you, because let's face it, you're reading the Ozone Shack which means you're probably not in a lab doing groundbreaking research) can patent a molecule. Not a means of synthesizing it or extracting it or distilling it or purifying it or packaging it or distributing it or administering it, but actually the molecule itself. You (again, probably not you) have to discover it and prove you discovered it, so it's not like you're all of a sudden going to have to start paying royalties on oxygen every time you breathe. (Or ozone, for that matter, which would spell the end for my stint in the blogosphere.)

But, if a team at Dow Chemicals discovers a new compound, let's call it hexyl-methyl-buggerol, that occurs naturally in the excrement of giraffes, and they patent it, any distributor would have to pay royalties for selling products that used hexyl-methyl-buggerol, even if it were synthesized in a lab. The patent law essentially treats the scientist who was first able to determine the molecular structure of a compound like it would the inventor of a device or piece of technology. And unlike the telephone or the jet engine or fiber-optics, you don't have to actually figure out how to make the molecule to get the patent. You just have to show that you discovered hexyl-methyl-buggerol and our bloated and undiscerning U.S. patent system will grant you the rights to control any use of hexyl-methyl-buggerol.

This is unnerving not just because someone can claim royalties for something they didn't technically invent, but because it implies that a person "invented" a molecule. It doesn't matter what theological or philosophical ideas you subscribe to, or even if you don't subscribe to any, you know there's something wrong with this. In any possible way of conceiving the universe, the structure of molecule itself was created or designed or came into being because of something  - be it God or laws of quantum mechanics or karmic cause effect or even the evil demiurge Yaldobaoth - something other than the conscious ideas of its discoverer. From a scientific standpoint it is unethical because assigns a human "inventor" to something that already existed or could form in nature, and from a religious standpoint it could be seen as borderline blasphemy, taking credit for something made by the creator. And it is for these above reasons that I find it dystopian that a molecule - and again, not a means of synthesizing it - can be patented.

Now, you may be thinking: "but Nate, it I'm not religious, nor do I have any ethical qualms about this because it provides incentive for scientific progress and supports capitalism. Why should I be terrified by this?"

Because someone has a patent on your DNA, that's why!

For the first few centuries of the patent concept's lifetime, living organisms were considered off-limits as being "products of nature." Then biotech came along and blurred the lines as to what was a product of nature and what was a product of human inventiveness. In 1988 a cancer-resistant mouse was patented, and many disease-resistant strains of crops followed suit. Once we mapped the entire human genome, essentially a collection of very large molecules, it was inevitable that scientists pharmaceutical companies would take the opportunity to stake their clam to specific genes. (And this is not to imply at all that they are nefarious Bond villains trying to control the world by controlling our genes, it's just a logical step to take given legal and scientific parameters.) So right now, the rights to about 10% of your genome are owned by a specific person or corporation. (Hey man, corporations are people too!)

Now obviously, they won't be charging a 3% royalty fee every time that gene replicates itself. But they can claim ownership over any gene therapy drugs that involve that section of your DNA. There are also implications for genetic testing, and basically anything else that involves the human genome. And as the speed we can sequence genomes increases exponentially, it is now possible to patent the entire genome of an organism. An example is the neem tree in India, whose genome is now the intellectual property of the W.R. Grace company. The tree itself may still be a "product of nature," but from a legal perspective, someone owns the information on how to make it.

The good news is that the supreme court has overturned many of these "gene patents," so hopefully all of our DNA will once become public domain. But if that is to happen, we need to realize that adhering to an absolute ideology will only lead us astray. We need discernment and the courage to stop before we get to the ideological extreme, in this case, that it is in the best interest of a capitalist society that every bit of intellectual property can be patented. Because if we did get there, the world would be very sci-fi indeed.

Edible/Audible, Abbreviations Edition

A special installment of the Edible/Audible series, a series where we find out what would happen if your favorite band was a food. This one is dedicated to bands that are commonly referred to by their initials. And yes, I realize I recycled one from a previous installment. What are you going to do about it?

CCR (Creedence Clearwater Revival) – Pizza Bagel Bites

Although it may seem more fitting to link CCR with some kind of southern (or faux-southern) food, they’re a band based on single servings that generally will go over well any time. Eat a whole album of these and you may not find it to be as appealing.

BTO (Bachman-Turner Overdrive) - Tortilla Chips

Something generic and non-nutritive, and although it is not a requirement for a party, it helps to have them somewhere in the background.

BOC (Blue Oyster Cult) – Potato Skins with Cheese and Bacon

Does it make sense? No. Is it awesome? Yes!

RHCP (Red Hot Chili Peppers) - Microwavable Burrito
Within their career, within a decade, within an album, and even within a song, they can alternate between riffs that are boiling-lava hot and remaining cool and unaffected by the chaos surrounding them. They are a composite of many textures, ingredients, and even of cultures, and most notably, are something that could only come out of LA. Also, fits nicely into a tube sock.

ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) - Mac n' Cheese

Accessible, reminds you of a simpler time, but can still sustain you well through your adult life.

DMB (Dave Matthews Band) - Chili with Okra

Almost sounds like generic Americana music, but there's something definitely off about the texture...

GNR (Guns n’ Roses) – Grape Nuts

Yes, it’s hard to believe, but this was once one of the most popular foods in America.

RATM (Rage Against the Machine) – A triple shot of fair-trade espresso

Politically and socially conscious, still gets you wired as hell

STP (Stone Temple Pilots) – Carob

Tries really hard to taste like the real thing, but just can’t.

NIN (Nine Inch Nails) - Cytomax

Based on principles of organic chemistry, but tastes like it's spent its entire existence in a laboratory and has never seen a tree, or even blue sky. Definitely takes some time to get used to, and with some people, it just never takes.

Something To Chew On

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"

-Rush, Freewill

We all like to think that we're different, that we're smarter than the average person in whatever demographic we may inhabit, that we're going to make it, that our own individual experience is somehow unique - you act like you're the first person to fall in love, the first person to give birth, the first person to have terminal cancer, the first person to think your car is a spaceship, the first person to be blown away that one time you discovered Rush - we believe we're going to beat the system, we believe we're the universe owes it to us to dispense equal and fair justice that's just a little biased towards ourselves because we all know that we're at its center, we think that history is just one big setup that culminates in Right Now, that it has all lead up to this point, that our dreams mean something, that our actions mean something, that we are more important than just the atoms we're made of and the space they take up, that we are independent, rational, free-thinking, logical children of the enlightenment, endowed with the gift of sapience to solve the Rubik's Cube that is the universe, when really, we might have to come to terms with the fact that we're just being influenced by quantum mechanics and instincts we don't understand.

I Can't Believe it's not Science!

"One more name on the slate, one less minute to wait

Too busy to see two versions of me

One more bottle is dry, one less reason to try"

-Phish, Two Versions of Me

The advertisements for gay.com have stopped showing up. At least I think so. I use Google Adsense for advertising, which basically uses keywords found on the website to generate advertisements that they think readers will be interested in. So apparently, the Google Monster thought that all of my readers were gay, because sometimes there would be a large banner ad that would read "gay.com. Are you?" Apparently the Ozone Shack has become more hetero, or at least the keywords have.

The ads actually have little to do with the content of the site. The most common ones seem to be for actual ozone producing systems and air ionizers.

But lately I have been noticing an advertisement that consists of a link that says "Quantum Jumping." This links to a website that is selling a bogus way to self actualize. The premise is that since quantum theory implies an infinite number of parallel universes, there are perfect versions of you existing out there somewhere. In fact, the site says "In these alternate universes, alternate versions of YOU are living out their lives." You can somehow commune with these other versions of you by meditating, because I guess the human mind somehow has the power to jump across universes. So basically, this combines a poor understanding of eastern religions with straight up misunderstandings about science to create a product that can conveniently be sold in an sixteen DVD box set that will enable you to be a brilliant painter, successful businessman, world-class athlete, and even recover from cancer.

Now, since I live a very boring life, I sometimes take solace in the fact that if Dr. Schroedinger is correct, there are an infinite many versions of me doing infinitely many cool things in an infinite number of parallel universes, while I lay on the couch popping ibuprofen like they're tic tacs watching season 2 of the X-Files. (The truth is out there and it's wearing a 90's power suit.) And yes, sometimes I wish my consciousness could jump, Tibetan yogi-style, to one of these hypothetical cooler, more interesting places. (And no, in case you were wondering, Tibetan yogi-style is not at all close to as dirty as it sounds.) And when I look back on some juncture where I probably did the wrong thing, I don't wish that I had chosen one different scenario had unfolded. I wish that multiple, if not infinite, scenarios had unfolded. But we're probably still just stuck with one universe, and it is very, very boring.

But let's assume that you could "jump" to another parallel universe. The Quantum Jumping website states that a new "bubble universe" is created every time you make a decision. This is not exactly how it works. If my understanding of quantum mechanics is correct it's more like whenever an electron moves differently or a subatomic particle decays that reality bifurcates. So, I'm far less likely to jump to a universe where I'm touring with Mötley Crüe and using one of Elvis' teeth as a guitar pick than I am to jump to a universe that is exactly the same, and the ratio of carbon-14 to nitrogen in my desk is still still the same, but they are distributed ever so slightly differently.

I think the program is more focused on meditating and visualizing a more perfect version of yourself, which is essentially what Tibetan yogis have been doing for centuries (when they're not doing it Tibetan yogi-style.) The site actually says that it is "science fiction [becoming] science," and I think that the quote by Max Planck may be enough to fool a lot of Americans into buying this. I mean, we bought those fucking abdominal stimulation belts. Maybe it will catch on. But so did the Atkins diet and Hare Krishna and chain letters.

I feel like I'm on a really existential version of a Mississippi gambling boat. But it's alright, because I brought my epistemological derringer.

Science!