X marks the spot

     Pirates?  Not really sure.  X marks the spot is a pretty clichéd saying, and you’d think that pirates would recognize after a while that if they keep on using the same mark for their treasure spot, someone else might find it as well.  Might as well mix it up a little bit, throw some O’s there for good measure.  Makes me wonder if there were just like illegal banks back then.  Kind of a decent idea, just like a regular bank in public, but then it holds all this laundered money particularly from pirates.  I mean, they probably couldn’t prevent too many stick ups of said “bank”, but if they could I mean.  Beats digging holes and having other people find it for sure. 

Album Review

     The last full album I listened to was Year Zero, by the group Nine Inch Nails.  Five of the sixteen tracks on the album are fairly well known by the public, but for the most part each song on the album is public worthy.  “The Beginning of the End”, “Survivalism”, “Capital G”, “The Great Destroyer” and “Meet Your Master” are the strongest tracks, and have received a fair amount of praise.  Some songs, such as “Zero Sum”, “The Greater Good”, and “Another Version of the Truth”, seem to drag on, leading only to disappointment after the buildups with dreary and inconsistent choruses. 

     By the standards of the man behind the project, Trent Reznor, the album is very unlike any other albums he has done before.  The album seems less experimental, and appears to follow more set song structures.  Year zero tries to appeal to every angle, not particularly focusing on one sound over another, though the drone and laptop-type electronic sharp tunes contrast against one another in almost every song.  It is far less instrument-based than his earlier album, simply and purely set noise, often blurring to set an interesting contrast.

     The songs are sudden, and definitely not something to simply relax to.  With its art rock influences, it keeps one aware the entire album.  One cannot deny the brilliance of Trent Reznor, a pioneer in the genre. The amount of care put in each song is evident, unlike some of his other, more experimental work (at one point, he had released four albums worth of music all at once, completed in only a couple months).  All in all, a wonderful album that has surely gotten well deserved recognition.

I know this means something

In fifty years, who knows what this world will be like? Will it even exist anymore? Will we?

     Maybe none of that is really important.  The thing that really matters, the thing I know means something, is that everything is remembered.  What happened in the past may not affect those that live on in the future, we couldn’t possibly know that.  But what does matter is that at the very least, things are portrayed, and known.  If something is forgotten, it is as if it never existed.  It seems disrespectful to me, more than that even. If we change how things are remembered, we change their perceptions, and how things happen or are supposed to. 

     How things are perceived are different depending on the viewer.  And likewise, how something is remembered varies from person to person or society to society.  However, the facts can be recited through memory, and have the perceptions of others judge the event or such.  Things being recorded are useless if the knowledge will not be remembered.  Everything that happens should be remembered, even if only by a single person at a time.