Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem / Rant about Rap/HipHop and how artificial and trashy it really is.

Maurice Duruflé, click for bio, composed my new favorite piece of music. I got an extremely high quality recording of Duruflé’s Requiem. I’ve been a fan of Requiems and choral music for some time now, but this work surpasses everything I had heard before it. Mozart’s Requiem is fantastic, and few pieces can rival the Confutatis or the Lacrimosa, but Duruflé’s Requiem, the Domine Jesu Christe and the Agnus Dei in particular, blow it to pieces. For a decent recording of Duruflé’s Agnus Dei, watch this video. It is one of the most moving and beautiful pieces I’ve ever heard. Over the last few weeks I’ve listened to it probably twenty times each day, and I haven’t gotten tired of it at all. It’s difficult to describe music of this emotional depth and beauty in a blog, so I beg you to listen to them, even if you don’t normally enjoy classical music, but if you don’t, seriously, rethink your life. Honestly. Here we go, rant time:

What is it with people these days and music. Obviously some people still have the common sense to recognize good music when they hear it, as there are some people in the country that attend orchestra concerts, the opera, etc, but these people are massively outnumbered by my generation, largely ignorant of the beauty and variety of classical music. Even in my high school’s orchestra, almost none of the players, even the principle players, would claim classical music as one of their favorites. Too often I see people leave orchestra rehersal and immediately begin playing loud hip hop in their cars. It’s ridiculous, and it’s disgusting. Hip hop may have cultural significance to some people, but in my opinion its cultural significance is analogous to that of saggy pants. It symbolizes a lower class, urban, violent lifestyle, where going to prison isn’t an embarrassing thing, it’s a feather in one’s proverbial cap. Why anyone would want to listen to rich black men rapping about what it’s like to be a poor black man, I can’t understand. Aside from cultural critiquing, rap doesn’t even sound like music. In most cases (yes there are a few exceptions), rap is a badly written song, usually lacking completely in grammar, that has no melody, merely a simple, boring rhythm. Rock isn’t much better. I admit, there are a very few rock groups that I enjoy (Dave Matthews, Coldplay, and Muse), but on the whole, it’s low quality over amplified trash that people enjoy only because it’s popular. None of this music will be looked back on in 50 years as the Beatles are now, and in 250 years will not even have a place in the most detailed of textbooks. This is the musical equivalent of pulp fiction, and listening audiences need to wise up to this fact. Ok, rant over. Point is, LISTEN TO CLASSICAL AND JAZZ! Thank you!

Sorry about that, but that rant has been waiting to get out for about ten years. If you’ve never explored choral music before, or even if you have, give Faure, Mozart, and Duruflé a try, and I can guarantee that if you keep an open mind and try to appreciate the natural beauty of this music instead of its pop cultural appeal, you will find a new and exciting genre unfold before you.

Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem / Rant about Rap/HipHop and how artificial and trashy it really is.

Maurice Duruflé, click for bio, composed my new favorite piece of music. I got an extremely high quality recording of Duruflé’s Requiem. I’ve been a fan of Requiems and choral music for some time now, but this work surpasses everything I had heard before it. Mozart’s Requiem is fantastic, and few pieces can rival the Confutatis or the Lacrimosa, but Duruflé’s Requiem, the Domine Jesu Christe and the Agnus Dei in particular, blow it to pieces. For a decent recording of Duruflé’s Agnus Dei, watch this video. It is one of the most moving and beautiful pieces I’ve ever heard. Over the last few weeks I’ve listened to it probably twenty times each day, and I haven’t gotten tired of it at all. It’s difficult to describe music of this emotional depth and beauty in a blog, so I beg you to listen to them, even if you don’t normally enjoy classical music, but if you don’t, seriously, rethink your life. Honestly. Here we go, rant time:

What is it with people these days and music. Obviously some people still have the common sense to recognize good music when they hear it, as there are some people in the country that attend orchestra concerts, the opera, etc, but these people are massively outnumbered by my generation, largely ignorant of the beauty and variety of classical music. Even in my high school’s orchestra, almost none of the players, even the principle players, would claim classical music as one of their favorites. Too often I see people leave orchestra rehersal and immediately begin playing loud hip hop in their cars. It’s ridiculous, and it’s disgusting. Hip hop may have cultural significance to some people, but in my opinion its cultural significance is analogous to that of saggy pants. It symbolizes a lower class, urban, violent lifestyle, where going to prison isn’t an embarrassing thing, it’s a feather in one’s proverbial cap. Why anyone would want to listen to rich black men rapping about what it’s like to be a poor black man, I can’t understand. Aside from cultural critiquing, rap doesn’t even sound like music. In most cases (yes there are a few exceptions), rap is a badly written song, usually lacking completely in grammar, that has no melody, merely a simple, boring rhythm. Rock isn’t much better. I admit, there are a very few rock groups that I enjoy (Dave Matthews, Coldplay, and Muse), but on the whole, it’s low quality over amplified trash that people enjoy only because it’s popular. None of this music will be looked back on in 50 years as the Beatles are now, and in 250 years will not even have a place in the most detailed of textbooks. This is the musical equivalent of pulp fiction, and listening audiences need to wise up to this fact. Ok, rant over. Point is, LISTEN TO CLASSICAL AND JAZZ! Thank you!

Sorry about that, but that rant has been waiting to get out for about ten years. If you’ve never explored choral music before, or even if you have, give Faure, Mozart, and Duruflé a try, and I can guarantee that if you keep an open mind and try to appreciate the natural beauty of this music instead of its pop cultural appeal, you will find a new and exciting genre unfold before you.

Quake Wars: a Quick Review!

I have little or not time to write this, but I’m gonna do it anyway, because I’m just that dedicated. I got to spend one glorious hour playing Quake Wars before being whisked off to a college fair thing, and it was one of the best hours of my life. Quake Wars is everything I could’ve hoped for and more. Put simply, “BF2 killer” – IGN. The hitboxes are impeccable, the game runs very smoothly on my mediocre computer, even at full resolution (1440×900) and Normal graphics quality. The gameplay is very similar to that of the game’s inspiration, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, a free multiplayer sequel to id’s Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The classes’ roles are all the same, but modernized, and the game as a whole is familiar but not redundant. The medic, for example, has defib paddles instead of a “revive needle”, but the functions are the same. The mouse/aim reaction time (for lack of a better phrase) was great, especially when compared to games like BF2, in which there could be a .5-1.5 second delay between your mouse and the crosshair. The vehicles were fairly easy to control, but difficult enough that practice and skill would give you a significant advantage on the battlefield. The included map, Valley, has its shortcomings, but if it’s par for the ET:QW course, I’m very happy with the game.

That’s all I have time for right now, got an English paper to write before I go to bed, so until tomorrow, goodnight.

P.S. – I’ve got the name SupremeBeing reserved for the game’s official release, so if you decide to use it in the demo, don’t get too attached.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Demo Released!!

Today’s the day! I’ve been waiting for roughly two years and I finally get to play Quake Wars! I’ve just started downloading the 727 mb file at about 140 kb/s. Kinda slow, but not bad considering that when I tried the torrent there were 380 seeders to about 3000 downloaders, yielding a grand total down speed of 17 kb/s for me. By 4:30 I should be fragging away in a bliss that will be matched only by the game’s full release. I’ll report back when I’ve played for a while on how awesome the game is. Yes, how awesome it is. This game has no capacity for bad qualities. None.

If you have a suitable computer, please do yourself a favor and download this amazing game here.

From what I’ve read, the map, Valley, that comes with the demo, favors the Strogg forces heavily, so keep that in mind when you get to the spawn select screen. Also, ATI users need to download and install an ATI Hotfix released today to run the Quake Wars demo. This Hotfix can be found here. Thanks for reading!

Shocking and Amazing Story

Today at my girlfriend’s house before a marching band competition, she and I were playing mercy. This, in retrospect, was a terrible decision, due to the fact that she will ***NEVER*** ***EVER*** give up. It was insane. Not to brag, but I’ve got fairly strong hands, and I’m pretty good at mercy. She, on the other hand, has tiny hands that are quite pliable. Here’s how it happened: once the match began, I basically just crushed her hand, which to me looked very painful, but she took it with amazing composure. I kept asking her to just say mercy, since she’s pretty much incapable of inflicting any pain on me, but she wouldn’t. I tried everything I could do to get her to say mercy without actually breaking her fingers, which I thought I had done a few times, but she just wouldn’t say the word “mercy.” This went on for about 15 minutes, and she was obviously in a good deal of pain, which probably hurt me almost as much to watch, but STILL wouldn’t give up. I was, at this point, begging her to say mercy, because I obviously couldn’t, owing to the fact that I was in no pain. She refused, stating that she hadn’t won anything all week and that she was sure as hell going to win at this. I thought we were at in impasse until, in a spasm of pain, she slammed her face into my elbow (which was in the air, twisting her arm), and started to cry. At this point, my heart broke (man that sounded corny, but it’s true). Our friend, who had been ignoring us until this point, got her some ice. Amazingly, she (my girlfriend) STILL wouldn’t give up!!! I had no choice but to say mercy and try my best to comfort her. She was extremely nice about it and didn’t blame me at all, but I felt (still feel) terrible about it. Anyway, moral of the story, do not play mercy with your girlfriend if she is as determined and as tolerant-of-pain as mine is. Unless you don’t like her. In which case, your call. But please, do not accidentally have your girlfriend bash her face on your elbow like I did. (reworded from “smash your girlfriend’s nose at her request)

Thank you for reading.

XM Radio! (Delphi Roady2)

I know this is way old news, but it’s new/old to me. Confused? Yeah, me too. So here’s the deal: I got XM (satellite radio for anyone living in or under a rock) shortly after it came out, when the second generation Delphi receivers were the top o’ the line. I got a Delphi Roady2, a nice little radio, for $50 bucks at BestBuy. It comes with everything needed to use in the car (mobile antenna, cassette adapter, DC power adapter) and even has a built-in FM transmitter for those of us without cassette decks in the car. For (I think) another $30, I got the Roady2 Home Kit. This included an AC adapter, larger Home antenna, and a nifty little remote control. As for content, there’s more than any one person could possibly want, and this is not a bad thing. There are now 4 24/7 comedy channels, whose only downside is the 5 minutes (or so) of annoying commercials per hour. Evidently all the music channels are commercial-free, but some of the talk/comedy/etc channels have commercials. Not a large problem though, all you have to do is change the channel. Anyway, I like the comedy and classical channels best, so I stuck those on my presets. Very easy interface overall, and there’s 30 presets available, like 8 backlight colors, and a neat little song recall function. When you hear a song you like, you hold in the OK button for about 2 seconds. It then saves the song’s info, and the next time it shows up on any channel, it notifies you, and allows you to go to the song with the push of one button. This feature might be the coolest thing about satellite radio in general, as it allows you to monitor all 200+ channels for your favorite songs. This radio now sells for less than $50, and there’s also a little conversion kit that turns the Roady2 into a mobile radio, including a battery, headphones that act as an antenna, and an FM tuner for when you can’t get the satellite signal (which is almost never). Really a superb piece of electronics at a tiny price.

Additionally, there’s a promotional code you can use when signing up that waives the activation fee and the first three months of service, as well as letting you purchase a year of service for 77.00 instead of the 12.99 monthly rate. Based on the amount of time I spend using the radio and its quality of sound and content, I think the 12.99 price is too low. But please don’t raise it XM

Thanks for reading,

Corin

Harry Potter Parody

If anyone is interested, I can invite them (you) as a viewer of my ongoing work, a parody of Harry Potter. It’s (imo) utterly hilarious Anyways, I don’t wanna post it here because in a few years this thing’s gonna make me a billionaire like J.K. Rowling.

Come to think of it, I better know you if you wanna read it because it’d be very easy for you to steal it

Anyway, there’s that.

School Starting

With all the shopping that I had to do this week I haven’t had time to post anything, apologies. Tomorrow’s the first day, and after that I should have time to write a little more about Canada. I got this awesome new backpack from the Swiss Army, a new car (more on that later), and a new graphing calculator after having mine stolen last year. The backpack is about the coolest backpack ever created, in my opinion, and I think if I tried really hard I could fit my entire house into it. Hehe. About the car, my dad got my grandpa’s ‘99 Honda Accord (which I love) and so I got his old ‘96 Volvo 850. I love this thing. I went from a ‘93 Nissan Quest with no air conditioning to a CAR (not minivan) with a/c, XM, a stick shift, good gas mileage, and it’s blue! It’s been a good week. All I’m waiting on now are my awesomeo House-like Nike Shox. Then I need to get some money together and buy a cane

Until tomorrow, Cyas.

I’m back!

After a long 10 days in Canada, I’m back. I’m not going to chronicle the entire trip in detail today, but I will in the near future. It’s roughly a 12 hour drive to the cabin where we stayed, and boy were my legs cramping. It was bearable though, and we arrived at like 7 in the morning. We had breakfast at a restaurant called the Maple House or something, which we called the Sugar Shack. It had great pancakes and stuff, and a large selection of souvenirs and stuff. Out back of the restaurant there were goats which you could feed corn to. Good times. We got to the cabin, and immediately set off on what I thought would be a peaceful nature walk of some sort on a path through the property. What followed was one of the best anecdotes I brought back from the whole trip. Not only was this not a “nature walk”, it wasn’t even on a path. We were pushing through trees, over rocks, through streams, etc. Not my cup of tea. There were many marshy areas where my shoes made sucking noises. I was told to avoid these patches of black mud, and I honestly did my best (hint: not good enough). My foot went down a few inches on one particularly bad patch. After we had gone maybe half a mile, which to me felt like around 30, we decided to turn back. On the way back, we hit a large patch of black mud with only two small branches to aid our crossing. Everyone made it across. Everyone, that is, but me. I slipped about an inch, and the next thing I knew, the patch of black mud had swallowed my leg up to just above my knee. Took Andrew (I’ll introduce the others later) about a minute to pull my leg free without losing my shoe, and he did it wonderfully. Anyway, that traumatized me for the rest of the day I had a great time the rest of the week though, and I’ll share more tomorrow or something.

Thanks for reading,

Corin

I’m back!

After a long 10 days in Canada, I’m back. I’m not going to chronicle the entire trip in detail today, but I will in the near future. It’s roughly a 12 hour drive to the cabin where we stayed, and boy were my legs cramping. It was bearable though, and we arrived at like 7 in the morning. We had breakfast at a restaurant called the Maple House or something, which we called the Sugar Shack. It had great pancakes and stuff, and a large selection of souvenirs and stuff. Out back of the restaurant there were goats which you could feed corn to. Good times. We got to the cabin, and immediately set off on what I thought would be a peaceful nature walk of some sort on a path through the property. What followed was one of the best anecdotes I brought back from the whole trip. Not only was this not a “nature walk”, it wasn’t even on a path. We were pushing through trees, over rocks, through streams, etc. Not my cup of tea. There were many marshy areas where my shoes made sucking noises. I was told to avoid these patches of black mud, and I honestly did my best (hint: not good enough). My foot went down a few inches on one particularly bad patch. After we had gone maybe half a mile, which to me felt like around 30, we decided to turn back. On the way back, we hit a large patch of black mud with only two small branches to aid our crossing. Everyone made it across. Everyone, that is, but me. I slipped about an inch, and the next thing I knew, the patch of black mud had swallowed my leg up to just above my knee. Took Andrew (I’ll introduce the others later) about a minute to pull my leg free without losing my shoe, and he did it wonderfully. Anyway, that traumatized me for the rest of the day I had a great time the rest of the week though, and I’ll share more tomorrow or something.

Thanks for reading,

Corin