RIP Michael J.C. Murawski, 1975-2020

[content warning: mental health, depression, suicide, evangelicalism]

...

My friend Mike died in February of this year to suicide. He was a good friend of mine for a long time, since we were kids.

The Beginning

I remember this sweatshirt very clearly

My first memories of him were about fishing. Mike loved fish, and fishing. It was his hobby before I even knew what a hobby was. Along with another friend, Dean, we all bonded over Transformers and video games. Mike was weird, creative, and funny.

We would make up little games to keep ourselves amused and entertained. We would race Transformers down the shiny new metal slide on the school playground. When we realized we didn't really want to throw our cool toys down the slide all afternoon, we switched to the safety-padding woodchips. We'd each find a big one, and race them down the slide. He would take his favorite ones home and refine them for aerodynamics and whatnot .. sanding them down, painting them, naming them.

Many other boredom-fueled games came thereafter. We weren't content to just play basketball in study-hall physical free time .. we had to make up our own games. What if we played hockey with little rubber balls, but in the hallway outside the gym. What if we played dodgeball, but full-contact. What if we played hockeyball-golf outside? We had fun.

Mike took to BMX and skateboarding. I tried, but it didn't "take." I was still happy to tag along, watch my friends practice sweet tricks, and absorb the culture.

At some point I noticed Mike's home life was .. kind of uncomfortable at times. His dad seemed like kind of a grump, and I'd see them get into little quibbles, which would sometimes explode into bigger, disproportionate frustration. I found out later that he was an alcoholic, and abusive. Hell.

Teenage Years

no such thing as bad skating weather

In our teenage years, we were awkward non-socialites. Well, Mike at least gave it a try--went to school dances, asked girls out, did sports, etc. I mostly just played video games in my bedroom. But we still joked around a lot.

Mike had an amazing sense of humor. His brand of humor included a lot of absurdity, inside jokes, referential stuff, and cynicism. He was less a fan of "lowest common denominator" bodily function-type humor. I dunno why, he seemed to feel like that was ... immature? Beneath him? But not quite as harsh as that sounds. But he always had a way of making a comment that would cut right through the ridiculousness of things. His mantra for humor was "it doesn't have to make sense."

Mike's first concert

In high school, I discovered that I wanted to find some music to listen to that was different. I had grown up watching MTV in the 80s and into the 90s, but my soul hungered for something different. Mike brought some of skater culture into my musical life with lots of alternative rock. Especially Primus. They rocked, were funky, and weird.

Around the same time, we started making music together. It started out as a joke in a boring study hall period. Mike and our friend Chad were joking around, quoting the Doors movie that had just come out. "We'll make a band, call it Zero .. the album will be called Black & White." Except, what it if wasn't a joke? I had just started learning bass guitar for a jazz ensemble piece in my school orchestra, so they recruited me, along with a couple of other friends who could play some instruments.

The first few recordings we made were "viral" hits in our social circles (well, mostly theirs since I didn't really have a social circle). They included a song about a classmate who got busted for stealing lunch tickets, a heartfelt ode to Doritos, and a poorly executed parody of a Dead Milkmen song about Chad's "Bitchin Ford Ranger."

The other guys lost interest pretty quickly, but Mike and I had found a new creative outlet. Eventually, we brought other musically-minded friends into the fold and it became a real band a few years later. Zero turned into Sub-Zero, which turned into Circle-F Zero Jarts, which turned into Omega Supreme. The music we were getting into got heavier and angrier. It was ironic at first, but eventually death metal and hardcore became part of our musical vocabulary.

College and Beyond

Focus. show, 1994

Then it was time for college. We were in different cities, but we found ways to stay in touch. Snail mail, and the internet, which in 1993 was just beginning to enter into common public use. Mike had planned to pursue engineering, following his passion for tinkering and invention, but soon discovered that the math was a bit too much. He switched to technical writing as a way to exercise his creativity in technological settings.

We still spent lots of time together during breaks, holidays, and random weekend home visits. The band starting taking shape. Our friend Mark had joined us on guitar the year before, and while Mike and I were at university, Mark and his friends (who were still in high school) started their own band. We recruited Sam, that band's drummer, for our own band, and went from there.

I started noticing that I had emotional problems. I was depressed and had social anxiety. Any friends I had were because someone reached out to me and "adopted" me (introverts know this dynamic very well). I was also very ... well ... I was terrible with girls. I hated it and I hated myself. I attempted to open up about things, but no one was really able to help. I also got hooked on internet chat rooms and games (MUDs). I think Mike (and other friends) knew it was .. problematic? But I felt mostly on my own.

We had discovered the local punk rock/hardcore/indie scene, and dove into the whole thing. We loved the Straight Edge concept. Middle fingers to substance abuse and drinking culture and all that. We also became more socially aware -- of issues like sexism, racism, homophobia. I think I was more interested in those things than Mike, but most of us moved politically left regardless. We incorporated punk/emo/hardcore styles into our musical vernacular.

At some point, too, we discovered anime (it was just starting to become a thing in America). In addition to record stores, we started making anime shops part of our regular weekend rounds. I enjoyed it, but it didn't quite "click" with me like it did Mike. 

The band, then called Focus. (with a period--it's very important), was moving along. We had done some real actual recording of some songs, played a few shows, and had a small presence in the proverbial scene. But the four of us felt pulled in different music directions. We had some blowups, and Sam astutely pointed out that it felt like breaking up with your girlfriend.

We were all still friends, though. Still went to shows and hung out and kept in touch. We all had musical projects, sometimes with each other, sometimes with new folks. We all supported each other.

By that time, I had found a girlfriend (or, she found me, really), and I was spending a lot of time with her. I noticed that sometimes when it was just Mike and I in a car on our way to or from a show, he'd be very quiet. Distant. Kind of uncomfortable, but ... whatever. Just put on some music and drive.

But of course still joked a lot. There was plenty of absurdity to be found (and mocked) in our college and social lives. Inside jokes and references continued to pile up. By the time we graduated, though, we weren't quite as close. He found work in the Chicago area, and ended up spending his whole 20-year-plus career at that company.

Mike sang for a few other Chicago-area bands

We did stay in touch though. We still loved music and sharing cynical thoughts about everything. Now we were mocking corporate culture and the suburbs. Mike had bought himself a guitar, a drum machine, a four-track tape recorder, and started writing more of his own music. I helped him out with bass and other occasional instruments. We tried to follow the "Zero" model and recruit other like-minded musicians, but nothing ever took hold. But we still made recorded plenty of songs as VOTAR (a reference to The Idiot Box, an Alex Winter-led comedy sketch show we loved in high school), and that name followed us off and on for the rest of Mike's time on earth.

It was becoming clear that Mike wasn't a very happy person. A lot of his cynical humor seemed to be coming from a place that was actually pretty angry and dark. The same was true of his musical tastes. While I was getting more into prog-rock, Mike was getting into heavier stuff--doom metal, black metal, noise.

He still loved anime, though. Especially the stuff that was ... I dunno how you put it. "Girly?" Like, not for girls, but with cute female protagonists or cute female love interests. Ah! My Goddess was his favorite series for quite a while. K-On! was one of his favorites later on. I think he liked the cute anime girl aesthetic, both because it was cute, and because ... well, Mike had romantic longings too. (Sadly, the kind of "waifu" thing Mike liked would eventually be co-opted by alt-right jerks, which I'm sure annoyed him to no end.)

Pokemon was something where Mike's interests and mine intersected. He loved the cartoon, and I liked the game. We were exchanging emails weekly, if not daily, and I noticed he was punctuating a lot of them with "Pika!" and "-kachuuuu." So I watched a couple episodes of the cartoon, and I was hooked. We both loved the cute critters that did cute friendly battle against each other. At one point, I tried to learn the theme song for VOTAR to cover, but that effort didn't get very far.

So Mike had this trichotomy going on. Angry music, cute anime, and isolation. I and our friends were meeting girlfriends and future wives, but Mike remained unlucky.

I started realizing though, Mike's cynicism was taking over his outlook. Everything was flawed. We'd go see a show, and he'd be annoyed at the popular guys being scenesters. He'd talk about how he was interested in a woman, until he found out some minor thing that would be a deal-breaker. He hated his job, hated Chicago, but couldn't find anything better anywhere else.

Some of the frustrations he'd share, though, seemed like typical corporate-world nonsense to me. Co-workers being inconsiderate, engineers being space-cases, managers being clueless, etc. Things that would be minor annoyances to most of us were psychological torture to Mike.

Personal Aside and Upheaval

At the turn of the 21st Century, I was going through some personal upheaval. I was spending more time with a newer bandmate, John, and a some of his aggressive personality was rubbing off on me. I started snapping at Mike more over email. I remember clearly, writing to him one Friday, when he was waffling about joining us for a weekend get-together at Dean's house in Iowa, "quit being a ____, come to Iowa and play video games." Mike's graciously deadpan response was, "Gosh, well now that you put it that way, no."

That's a dynamic where, knowing Mike, I get, but I have a hard time putting into words. But I'll try.

So, back to skater culture. In the 80s and into the 90s, in our small-town Wisconsin hometown (and I'm guessing elsewhere, too), there was a rift between skaters and metalheads, and lots of mutual disdain between the two. The skaters had a reputation for being obnoxious punks, and the metalheads had a reputation for being burnout losers. Certain aspects of their culture became a proxy for this conflict -- drinking, smoking, cruising up and down Main Street, macho attitudes, etc.

And I think that's the key -- the macho "f- you" attitude, which was very different from the punk "f- society" attitude. It's the difference between "let's fight" and "let's burn down society." And in the world of punk and hardcore, the macho attitude was something Mike especially hated, and I can see why: Punk was supposed to be counter-culture, more "woke" (before that became a thing), and yet there were the same social dynamics -- people being alpha males who just wanna act tough and pick up chicks.

But, that phase of my life didn't last. Not giving a f--- and being a red-blooded male didn't really suit me all that well. Mike confronted me over email about my rudeness toward him, and I apologized. we kept in touch.

Then, more personal upheaval. John and I tried to make the Band work, but it failed pretty unremarkably. We had moved to upstate New York, and after a year of very little activity, John was moving with his new girlfriend, and I was moving to California to pursue a change of scenery and a woman-friend.

The few years that followed were some of the most consequential of my entire life. Briefly, my woman-friend and I got married, and we terrible for each other. We had major conflicts between each other, and I had major internal conflicts as a result. Over the course of a year or so, it all grew to be too much, and I tried to kill myself.

I ended up scrambling for a solution, and ended up in therapy, on medication, and eventually, deep into an evangelical Christian lifestyle. I made a big show of my "redemption story" during my journey through therapy and recovery, and I ended up trying to evangelize to Mike. He (wisely) ignored my spiritual-preachiness, but we confided some things in each other, and I understood more about his inner struggles.

As it turned out, Jesus-worship wasn't the cure for me, and my marriage ended in separation, and then divorce just a few years later. In the meantime, I was .. a different person. Evangelicalism does that to a person. It lures you in and whisks you into a different reality. "Holy" literally means "separate," and they take it seriously. I stayed in touch with my back-home friends, but barely.

Back to the Midwest

new ride

I ended up moving back to Wisconsin and rebuilding my life, but it got harder to stay in touch with Mike. We visited each other regularly, and kept up on social media, but regular emails and other base-touching faded away.

Sadly, Facebook was really the last venue where we were in regular touch. Mike's posts tended to be pretty unflinching, and increasingly dark. He still listened to a lot of heavy, dark music, and added horror movies to his repertoire. Of course, just consuming "dark" media doesn't necessarily mean one is a "dark" person, but in Mike's case it was as much a reflection of his inner world as much it was an escape or release. He continued to balance this with the optimistic escapism of upbeat anime fandom.

Emblematic of his inner conflict: the success of Babymetal. When they first came out, it was basically tailor-made for Mike's tastes. Heavy music with "idol" J-Pop frontwomen. But then they got mainstream-popular and landed a slot opening for Lady Gaga. (In general, anime started becoming a cultural touchstone of "gamergaters" and the alt-right. I'm not positive what Mike's thoughts or feelings were on that, but I can't imagine they were positive.)

At one point, Mike did find a girlfriend. He seemed happy about it, until suddenly he broke it off. I don't know what happened or why. As far as I know, he never had any success dating after that. It bothered him, and he felt like if only he could be happy if he had romance in his life.

The End

Mike and Abby

From what I can tell, the beginning of the end was when his father passed away, around 2016. It seemed to hit him really hard, and I don't think he ever recovered from that grief. His Facebook posts became consistently dark. There was lots of self-hatred, pleas for the hurting to stop. Donald Trump's election shook a lot of us, and Mike was no exception. For his psychological well-being, though, it was just another log on the fire. The human race was tragically and fatally clueless, and doom was imminent. Of course, this included himself. Especially himself.

Another log on the fire: his relationship with his sister. She had problems of her own, and family get-togethers were difficult, and often contentious. I don't want to get into specifics here, out of respect for the family. Suffice to say, it was another source of frustration for Mike, to put it mildly.

A year or two later, Mike reached out to some of his closest friends, myself included, about some specific personal struggles. We all voiced our support and well wishes. His Facebook posts alluded to some of these struggles, and it seemed like he was doing better. Not great, but better.

That didn't seem to last, though. The last couple years were a whirlwind. There were frequent, increasingly desperate Facebook posts. It was really hard to watch, and I didn't know what to do. It was especially frustrating, because I've been there. I know the pain of self-hatred, of being stuck in negative patterns, of having childhood stuff to work through.

At one point, I believe in 2019, Mike went on short-term disability leave from work. He started some kind of treatment program, or programs. Sometimes (again, based on his Facebook posts), it seemed like some things showed promise. But as anyone who's been through any kind of recovery knows, it's often one step forward, two steps back.

A few things seemed to keep him going: his friends, anime, music, horror movies, and his cat. He had tried adopting a cat a few years prior, but that cat wasn't a good fit. Abby was much better. She had special dietary needs, but Mike seemed happy to provide for her.

One other thing that continued: St. Anna's runs. Dean would host semi-regular trips to a supper club in St. Anna, a village in the middle of nowhere in eastern Wisconsin. Friendly staff, old fashioneds, relish trays, and huge cuts of meat. Great for guys-nights-out kinda things. Mike always seemed to be in a decent mood when he joined us for those. We would also have semi-regular weekend get-togethers. Video games, junk food, movies, etc.

One time, though, Mike declined an invitation to St. Anna's, so it was just Dean and I. We talked about Mike, and his state of being. We knew that he was hurting, that he was in a very dark place. I remember telling Dean, "If he had a gun, he'd be dead." That's when I found out, from Dean, that Mike's dad had been abusive. Dean figured it should have been something like a relief when he passed, but from what I've read, sometimes the opposite can happen--the passing of an abuser can re-open old wounds. I don't know; I never asked Mike about it.

Soon after, in February of 2020, I got a Facebook message from Mike's mother. It was over, Mike had passed on. I relayed the message to our mutual friends and acquaintances. We were shocked and saddened. But I wasn't surprised at all. I confirmed later that it was suicide.

The funeral was bittersweet. I got to catch up with friends that I hadn't seen in a while, and I got to reconnect with Mike's mother and sister. A group of us made a memorial St. Anna's run.

In the following months, I helped Mike's mother sort through some of Mike's stuff, like technological and musical stuff. I "inherited" a bunch of it, and I plan to make use of it (and/or sell it off and donate the proceeds to charity). I'm Facebook friends with both his mother and his sister, and some of Mike's other friends that I hadn't met, but knew through his Facebook rantings. It feels like a way of maintaining a bond with him.

Thoughts of Jack's

I try not to let myself fall into the "I shoulda done something" trap, but it still feels awful that I had a sense of inevitability about Mike's suicide. I could have given him a phone call, fired off a text or a DM or an email. Would it have helped? Well, it certainly wouldn't have hurt.

I think my biggest worry is, did Mike at least understand that people actually cared about him? Like a lot of suicidal people, he was convinced that he was a terrible person, that the world would be better off without him, etc. He knew he had friends, though. Did he get that his friends actually cared about him? I think so? I hope so? Honestly, though, I don't know fore sure, and that bothers me. Maybe that's just playing into the "I shoulda done something" dynamic. I don't know.

I was talking with my sister (who also knew Mike, and was Facebook friends with him) about the whole thing. We agree that what Mike needed was a long leave of absence from work, and long-term, intensive therapy and psychiatric treatment. He had a lifetime's worth of baggage to sort through, and I understand how difficult it is to do so while being productive at a challenging job in an often unpleasant work environment.

Soapbox

Mike's reaction to the 2016 US election (and many of ours too, of course)

Getting a little more abstractly political, this is a failure of multiple American systems: capitalism and healthcare. Capitalism doesn't care if Mike lives or dies. His employer will just hire someone new. Our healthcare system doesn't care about Mike unless he can pay. And he can't pay if he doesn't have a job. But he can't do his job if he can't function, and he can't function if he doesn't get the care he needs.

It's a terrible cycle. In another system, maybe he could just take some disability leave, maybe he could get financial assistance from public safety net programs, maybe he could get the care he needed via public health services, and maybe he could come through it all a better person for it.

I don't know. I do know that I lost my friend. A lot of my personality is informed by the time I spent with Mike. My absurdist and sarcastic sense of humor, my taste in music, my creative drives, my cynicism toward mainstream society, my appreciation for anime and Japanese culture. A lot of who I am is because of him. I miss him terribly.

I Hope This Blogpost Finds You Well

 Hi everybody.

I haven't updated this in a long heckin time. I dunno if I'll keep this up, but might as well give it a shot.

I have a big Thing that I need to talk about, and it's the passing of Mike, my friend of many decades. 

I have Thoughts about things political and social and whatnot.

But mostly I want to reestablish this as a vehicle to talk about Mike's passing.

Brauny?

Hi everybody.

So over the last few years--since I moved back to Wisconsin, really--I've become more of a sports fan. I discovered that the Milwaukee Brewers weren't terrible anymore (in fact, they reached the playoffs for the first time since I was 7 years old). A few years later, I met my now-girlfriend, and she got me more interested in baseball again. That was 2011, and the Brewers went on to win their first Division title since I was a kid, and came within a couple games of going to the World Series. A major factor of the Brewers' success was the offensive production of their extremely potent 3-4 punch in Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder. It was very exciting.

Then Fielder left for free agency. And then it came out that Braun was facing a suspension for testing positive for exogenic testosterone (or something like that). Braun fiercely maintained his innocence, and I was one of the many Brewers fans who bought into his stories. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, that there was something going on that explained the positive result.

But MLB kept going after him. There was the Biogenesis thing, which had made a couple of cryptic references to Braun, and then MLB cut a deal with the former owner of the clinic. Then rumors came out that a suspension was imminent, anywhere from 50 games to a lifetime ban. And now, it's official: 65 game ban, effective immediately.

Braun issued a generic apology, which basically amounts to "mistakes were made." As a fan who has been lied to repeatedly for the last year and a half, I'm not satisfied. I believe pretty strongly in second chances and in redemption. Lord knows how much shit I've got on my soul over the past 38 years of imperfect existence. But I also believe pretty strongly that you gotta own up to that shit.

Braun, the Brewers, and MLB seem to be content to leave it at "mistakes were made," and that that should provide enough closure for us to "put this whole thing behind us." But I don't think it works that way. What exactly did Braun do? What did he take? How much and for how long? Why didn't he come clean sooner? Why did he lie to the press, to his fans? Why did he throw the MLB tester guy under the bus? The more of these questions he can answer, the more willing I will be to forgive him and move on.

Update, February 2013

So, uh, I haven't really kept up with this, but I'm going to try to post more often than biannually. :/

Anyway, here's a rundown of what I've been up to:

* Been playing lots of Magic: the Gathering. Easily my #1 hobby now. The last few months I've been paying more than ever. I keep growing as a competitive player, which is both good and not-so-good. Good because I like winning, and I like being good at something that I enjoy doing. Not-so-good because not winning hurts more than it used to. I had fun at the Gatecrash prerelease events recently, but after going 1-3 in both events and not getting any prize product. I've since bounced back by going undefeated in my last two Standard events.

* I met a woman, who quickly became my Serious Girlfriend. She's a geek/dork/nerd tri-brid like myself, and we're really good for each other. Things aren't perfect, for reasons I'm not sure I want to get into in this public venue, but ... We have a very good thing.

* I got bit by the "modern console gaming" bug. It started when visiting my girlfriend's friends over a holiday break, and he showed me the glory that is Skyrim. So when I had a couple-three hundred bucks, I splurged and dove right in. Then I got into MLB 2K13, which was the first baseball video game I've played since the days of the NES/SNES. Then I started playing Mass Effect, a series I had heard of but didn't know much about. Once the story of the first game got me hooked, I pretty much dropped everything not related to work or Magic and plowed through the whole trilogy over the course of the next few months. And yes, the ending sucks.

* I still listen to quite a bit of video game music and chiptunes, but perhaps not quite as much as used to. I had a lot of fun at the two Magfests I've been to. I'd love to start a video game music cover band, though. It'd be less metal and more prog-rock. Like if Genesis time-traveled from 1976 to start a VG music band.

* Speaking of prog-rock, I got to attend the final NEARfest. It was glorious, and so much fun. I found myself just smiling to myself walking around the venue, taking in the scenergy (unintentional portmanteau there). And the concerts were [mostly] fantastic. Aranis was loads of fun, and despite the clear Univers Zero influence, they almost instantly became one of my favorite "new" bands. Unfortunately, I was a little underwhelmed by Anglagard, both by their new album, and by their performance. It felt like the passion was just gone, and the new album felt like more of the same. I was looking forward to UK, but I was so tired by the end of the that I couldn't keep my eyes open. Also .. I like the new Rush album a lot, and I look forward to seeing them live when they roll through the Dairyland this summer.

* Speaking of not-prog-rock, I've rekindled my childhood love of Weird Al Yankovic. I hadn't paid a lot of attention to him or his music since .. well, 20 years ago. I knew he's been active, but I didn't realize that he still "had it." I once saw him say in an interview, "What I do never gets old," and it's really true. And he's a master. I got to see him in concert this year, and it was definitely the most FUN concert I've ever seen. I think I was smiling and/or laughing for the entire show.

My mental and emotional state 3-4 years ago was not that good. I was in turmoil after separating from my [now officially] ex-wife, struggling to keep my head above water and find something to keep living for. It's amazing how just finding simple joys and pleasures can lead to sweeping life changes. Rediscovering old hobbies. Making new friends, acquaintances, relationships. Trying new foods, traveling to new places. Suddenly, life isn't all bad. Then, somehow, life regains some meaning that you never knew was there. Funny how that works.

Moving forward, I'd like to try to keep up with this thing. It's not that I have nothing to [a-]muse about, it's just that I don't get around to posting it to this thing. For I've decided to start a new, separate blog for my Magic-related thoughts, including detailed tournament reports. (EDIT: here it is!)

Okay, that's it for now. Thanks for reading!

Top 10 of '10!

It's a new year, so, as a music lover, I'm required to give my annual Top 10 list. Of course, I think these Top 10 lists are bogus. I mean, how many musical projects were released in the past year? Thousands? Millions? And how many of them did I hear? Only a very small non-zero fraction of them. What are the odds that I've actually heard the "best" release of 2010? Very slim. So I guess to be more accurate, this would be a list of my favorite 10 musical projects released in calendar year 2010 that I was able to hear in calendar year 2010. So, in no particular order, here's my list:


1. Hey Champ - Star. Learned of these guys through an animated gif of a lady with dolphins for boobs, which turned out to be extracted from a music video from this band, which turned out an album's worth of excellent dreamy synth pop. Ear candy.


2. Wizwars - Telstar Arcade. 2010 is the year I really "got into" chiptunes. I discovered the genre in 2008, but it wasn't until this year that I really began to appreciate it for reasons other than novelty. Wizwars is a regular over at The Shizz (my Internet hangout of choice lately), and after falling in love with his Game Boy Rock! Special Edition CD, I became a bonafide "fan." He writes catchy, dancey chiptunes, generally on Game Boy target hardware. Lots of funky sounds and beats and catchy melodies. Telstar Arcade is his latest, and is quite a bit darker than most of his previous stuff I've heard, which isn't at all a bad thing. Still groovy, just .. darker. I like it.


3. B.o.B - B.o.B Presents the Adventures of Bobby Ray. 2009 is the year I first started getting into mainstream hip-hop of the modern era (that is, post-early-90's), and B.o.B unleashed this ambitious debut on us this year, led by his awesomely catchy hit single "Nothin on You." The album runs a pretty wide gamut of stylistic blending, from old-school R&B, to fuzzy pop-punk, to whatever you call the trippy "Fifth Dimension," to good old fashioned straight-up southern rap. Lots of fun stuff, but also just plain very creative and enjoyable, with moments of poignancy.


4. Various Artists - A Chip off the Shizz Block, Volume Two. Okay, yeah, I know I was part of this .. but I still really like it. Actually, now that I think about it, it was listening to this in my car that really cemented my love for the chiptune genre. The quality of some of the stuff on here is kind of spotty, but the good stuff is really good.


5. Marina and the Diamonds - The Family Jewels. I was pointed to this talented young lady by the folks at the Progressive Ears message board while debating the merits of Lady Gaga. She's young and pretty, which is probably part of why she's gotten as far as she's gotten, but she writes and performs catchy piano-driven pop music with enthusiasm and quirkiness that I like.


6. Rush - "Caravan" b/w "BU2B". Rush is currently in a 3-way tie for my favorite band at the moment (with Camel and Anglagard), and this is their latest effort, a little preview of an album their working on, called Clockwork Angels. Maybe to be released in 2011? Who knows. Anyway, they released this as a digital download, and I guess you can mail-order a CD or something. I like it .. it seems right on par with the best stuff from their last album, Snakes & Arrows. I look forward to hearing more.


7. Sunstroke Project (with Olia Tira) - "Run Away". Lol wut? Okay, so I got completely hooked on this song via the EPIC SAX GUY Internet phenomenon. The song is cheesy and the EPIC SAX GUY is completely ridiculous, but dang the song is catchy. Well worth the $0.99. I think.


8. Norrin_Radd - Anomaly. Chiptune death metal from another fellow Shizzie. Well, chiptune death/prog/tech-metal. With sci-fi lyrics. Very busy and dense. Well done, but I'm not sure it's really "my kinda thing."


9. Jake Kaufman - Shantae: Risky's Revenge OST. Aka "virt", Kaufman has been a busy boy in the video game industry doing sound design & music & whatnot. This is the soundtrack to the long-awaited follow-up to the Game Boy cult classic "Shantae." Kaufman did a very memorable (and equally cult-classic) sountrack to the original, and he did a very nice soundtrack here as well. I'm not sure it stands out quite as much compared to the original, but it's still pretty good. I haven't really had much of a chance to absorb it yet.

...

Huh, well I can't think of any other 2010 releases that I actually heard this year, so I guess I'll have to stop it at 9. Hey, it's better than the ~3 I got to in 2009, and the 1 I got to in 2008! Maybe I'll have a whole 10 at the end of 2011. I know I'll have at least one, the latest chiptune collection from Disasterpeace entitled Rise of the Obsidian Interstellar. Spacy, proggy, intricate .. good stuff. And released JUST TODAY. See how relatively cutting edge I am? lol

The Great Health Care Debate

I recently participated in an ad-hoc discussion about the "health care overhaul" thingy that was recently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama. I put some thought into it, and I figured it would be with sharing to an audience beyond my friend's other Facebook friends. The following is a summary of what I think...

First, some background on my own political philosophy. It's changed over the years. A LOT. As an illustration, I have voted in 3 of the 4 Presidential elections I've been legally able to do so in. The one I didn't was because of .. time concerns? Laziness? Something like that. And each of those 4 elections, I voted for (or would have voted for) candidates from 4 different political parties.

In 1996, I was in college, and all about "independent" stuff, and I gravitated toward the various third parties out there. I was drawn by the Greens, but was more impressed with the rhetoric of the Natural Law Party, who put emphasis on implementing government solutions that have been proven effective (they also had a Transcendental Meditation under-platform, but I ignored that whole thing).

By 2000, I had become a big Rush fan (the band, not Limbaugh), and by extension, a moderate admirer of Ayn Rand (e.g., "2112"). I was all about free society, free economy, all that stuff. I was also in excellent physical, emotional, and mental health, with an very well paying job. I was well off, and I wanted more of the same. So I voted Libertarian.

The early 2000's were a shitstorm for me personally. I won't go into it, but suffice it to say that I emerged from the crisis with a new found spirituality, focused on Evangelical Christianity. I was interested in all matter of Evangelical stuff, including the national Evangelical media (e.g., Focus on the Family). I was looking for a candidate who shared my orthodox Biblical worldview, and I found a willing partner in George W. Bush. (In retrospect, I see how I fell for the Bush campaign's strategy of leveraging people of faith, without necessarily exploring the totality of the Bush's policies as they related to Biblical principles and values.)

2008 was another shitstorm year for me, from which I'm still recovering. My life was a stereotypical country song--I lost my wife, my job, even my dog (though I was fortunate to retain possession of my motor vehicle). My parents were willing to take me in, so I moved back to Lake Mills to be with them. In the meantime, I was questioning a lot of my values, both spiritually and politically. I found myself undergoing sometimes daily shifts to the left. I was becoming less and less convinced of the truth of Evangelical doctrine, and of conservative politics. I went into the election season election with an open mind, and found myself utterly unimpressed with anything McCain said or advocated, and very impressed with most of what Obama said and advocated. I think the deciding moment came during the "forum" style debate when John McCain took a question from a young African-American man, and told him some background about the financial crisis, naming companies like Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, and telling him, "of course, you've probably never heard of them before." It so embodied the gulf between older white men in power, and the increasingly complex face of America's younger generations. I voted for Obama.

Okay, so that was longer than I intended. Sorry about that. Anyway, on to 2010, when this "historical" health care has been debated, and now passed. I've developed some pretty strong opinions, and they go a little like this:

My (current) general philosophy is that of community responsibility, which comes in part from life experience, and stuff I've gleaned from various academic sources over the years. I strongly believe in individual freedom, both socially and economically. But I also believe that "freedom isn't free," and that society should make sure that its disadvantaged are taken care of. Individual freedom precludes equal outcome, but does include an attempt at equal opportunity. Ideally, I believe any random human being born in this country should have a chance to make the best life for himself or herself. Hard work should be rewarded, but circumstances beyond a person's control should not hinder him or her from becoming the person he or she is.

In practical day-to-day society, we rely on public institutions for this kind of thing. For most of us, that means the government. There are other resources available to some, such as family, friends, church, and other organizations, but government is what is available to all of us. As a leftover from my libertarian, I generally support a free economy and a free society. Where I differ is when it comes how one's actions affects others in society. I'm not allowed to do whatever I want to do, because doing so can harm myself or others. Economically, I'm not allowed to enter into certain financial contracts (such as involuntary servitude), because doing so can harm myself or others.

In my Economics 101 class in college, I remember a principle that we learned about taxes. Part (or most, or all) of the point of taxes is to provide financial disincentive toward economic activity detrimental to society as a whole--a disincentive that otherwise wouldn't exist within a free market. One example given was public transportation. It's a fact that everybody wants to drive their own car. But if every worker and an urban locale commuted in their own car, the city is negatively impacted by pollution and traffic density. An individual car driver has no incentive not to drive to work. So the local government can (and usually does) subsidize a public transportation system. For every 20 people that take the bus, that's 20 cars off the road, 20 less cars to pollute and create gridlock.

I've seen this principle used elsewhere in public policy, such as public roads, police force, military, and education. These are all things that our society benefits from, but that we would otherwise probably not support as much individually. We benefit from our educational systems, because then kids can learn how to become productive members of society. (Unfortunately, the inverse has also been proven to be true.)

So what about health care? What is it? I happen to view it similarly to education. It's something that everybody needs in order to maintain a certain livable standard. If I'm sick, I can't be productive. Sometimes I can't get better on my own, so I need some help. Where am I going to get that help? That's where I believe government should be stepping in. I think we would get a similar public benefit from public health as we currently get from public education. People would get a chance to get up on their feet and have a shot at being a productive member of society. People who would otherwise not be able to.

I support some kind of public health care system, similar to our public education system. Public schools aren't the greatest, but if you can afford better, you're free to get private schooling. Public health should be the same way. Provide some minimal level of coverage available to all. Preventative care (e.g., regular screenings & physicals) for all, and specialists for those with special health needs. If an individual can't (or doesn't want to) wait for the public doctor to see someone, then they should be free to shell out the $$$ to see a private doctor.

So how about the health care overhaul just passed? I think it's a step in the right direction. It's got some good stuff, and some not-so-good stuff. Obviously, I would have wanted some kind of public option to be in there. But I'm glad that there's at least something in there to help impoverished folks to get insurance. I don't agree with the "mandate" requiring citizens to get insurance--that goes against the individual freedom I value. I've also heard that there isn't much in the bill to get health care costs under control. Beyond that, I'm not familiar enough with the bill to comment much on it. From what I understand, I'm not going to be affected that much by it (if at all). So while I ultimately reserve judgment, I've gleaned enough from news sources (mostly NPR, Google News, and admittedly a smattering of liberal talk show commentary) to generally agree with the spirit of the current health care legislation, to move toward health care being more accessible to the general public.

Rocktober

Okay, this post won't have much to do with rock & roll, but it is October, and I do enjoy some good rock. Oh, actually, I've got something to review. I'll get to that next post.

First, my Magic game has significantly improved. I went 3-1 at the Zendikar release on the strength of a good Landfall deck, and a couple of Friday Night Magics ago, I won the whole thing (earning a Misty Rainforest and a Marsh Flats for my efforts, both $15-20 cards right now). So that was cool. But then something happened. I stopped doing as well. I went 1-2 at Zendikar Game Day, where my beloved Devour deck got easily dismantled by Vampires. The following Friday Night Magic, I went 1-2 again on a surprisingly weak red-white aggro deck. And I didn't take it very well. I was all grumpy and grumbly, and frankly, not a good sport about the whole thing. So I took a step back and looked at the whole thing. I realized, okay, I'm supposed to be having FUN doing this, right? So I need to have fun. I started letting competitiveness get in the way of enjoying myself. So last night, I took my homemade Landfall deck to the Standard Constructed tournament, and I went 0-3. BUT! I had a good attitude about the whole thing, and it helped that I was able to pull off a sick combo of Baloth Woodcrasher + 3 Harrows for 28 damage in one swing. I had what I guess is called a "Timmy" moment. I was all, "YES! This is why I play Magic!" I still got my butt kicked in that match by Vampires, but I had fun. :)

Then another funny thing happened last night. I forgot to take 50mg of my 75mg dose of Anafranil. And I had a surprisingly crisp mental day today. The great thing about Anafranil is that it boosts my mood and helps me to let go of unwanted thoughts. The not-so-great thing is that it covers up bad moods and stifles motivation, and hinders my ability to hold onto wanted thoughts. So today I found myself energized, awake, alert, motivated, and thinking more sharply than I have in quite while. And I didn't suffer any kind of "moody" effects. Win! I happened to have an appointment with my psychiatrist today, and I told her what happened. I also told her how my moods have been stabilizing, and how I'm not as concerned about stopping "unwanted" thoughts as I used to be, and how I've improved in a lot of my higher-level attitudes about stuff (religion, recovery, etc.). She was all "Good for you!" and gave me her blessing to come down from 75mg to 50mg. So I'm gonna do that and see how it goes. Neat!

Another funny thing has happened. My soon-to-be-ex-wife is getting hooked on Magic. I've been telling her about it, and she became curious, and she got totally sucked into it. Now she wants to buy all kinds of cards and build decks and play and stuff. It's funny. :) An interesting thing I've noted about all of this is how much "hobby" type stuff we have in common now that we've been separated for almost two years. We've both rediscovered music, exercising, recovery (in a non-co-dependent way), and now Magic. It's the kind of thing where it could easily make a guy jealous ("Gee, I wish my wife liked Rush and played Magic..."), but it doesn't even faze me anymore. Because I know that there's a hell of a lot more to relationships than shared interests. Shared interests are important, but successful communication and problem-solving are infinitely more so. Without the ability to work out differences, there's no room for anything else. So, I consider it a lesson learned.