I bought a distortion pedal off some guy from craigslist a few days ago. If you are unfamiliar with distortion all you need to know is that it is the magic that makes guitars sound awesome. Except for this pedal. I'm not really into its sound. I eventually found a balance that gave me the sound I want, but I honestly prefer the built-in distortion switch on my AMP. However, every time I've told another guitar player that I have to walk over to my amp and press a switch on it with my hand if I want distortion they have laughed out loud. I understand pedals are how we do it now. This is what mine looks like:
Yeah, I knelt down and took a picture of it just for you. Its 12:48 on a saturday night. Why would I be doing that? I'm on call. Some guys did something to a database tonight, and I need to stay up for a while to check in on this thing that you don't care about.
The main reason I was able to justify buying a pedal was the fact that it was the only way to record into my computer with distortion. The "emulated line out" thing on my AMP transmits a signal that is not distorted and also not even amplified, so the only way to record me playing with distortion was to just put a cheap mic near my amp (as opposed to connecting the amp directly to my computer). Well...long story short now I have a pedal and some more cables I bought from radio shack this morning and I still can't do it. There are a lot of things I can do--most of them involve recording total silence and one involves a really nasty sound getting recorded. I don't know what it will take to make this all work together so I can record myself playing, but I am certain it involves buying more stuff.
Girls
My volleyball team practiced at some volleyball court on a college campus. The sand had a consistency similar to cat litter. Also, since getting rejected by Firefly Girl I started thinking about asking out this girl on my volleyball team--yeah ok so my volleyball team, for the moment, is me and three girls. I know, heaven, right? Well anyway only one of them is single, but she is pretty hot, so the only thing holding me back, besides my desire to continue moping around pining after Firefly Girl, was wondering how long I have to wait before I asked the next girl. They're friends, and I understand there is some kind of...thing. I don't know what the rule is. All I know is when I lived in Philly I texted this girl Kristen asking if she wanted to go to some party. But like most girls she didn't respond, so I waited a few days and texted her roomate, and as soon as I did that they both responded and said no. Well...later they both yelled at me for violating some kind of timing rule I still don't understand. Maybe I just have bad luck with girls with K names. I don't know.
Anyway, none of this is imporant because I think I figured out today that the girl on my volleyball team that I was about to be interested in dating is probably dating someone.
But not to despair, because I recently rewrote my okcupid profile and left a nasty gram in there from my frustration, and as soon as I did so some girl messaged me asking if I wanted to grab a beer. I edited my profile again, thinking that the things I wrote would get me kicked off the site, but instead I was rewarded with more girls messaging me, and then okcupid emailed me to tell me that they have decided I'm an attractive person now, and they will start showing me hot girls.
So, I don't understand how all this works. Every time I am completely honest with a girl in real life they tend to cry to stop talking to me. (the latter is their reaction to my expression of undying love). Or its like the time this one girl said she might visit me in Seattle in like 4 months, and I warned her that by that time I might be dating someone. Yeah that was the wrong answer. After consulting with 1 or 2 people about it, the best guess I can come up with for the right answer is to have not mentioned the possibility of me dating anyone, and just have hoped that my every attempt to too meet someone would fail. Especially since thats what ended up happening.
But on the internet, telling people what you think, even (or especially) when you coat it with bitter sarcasm, just rewards you. I don't think I'm ever going to understand girls.
Also, yesterday I paid $40 to go whitewater rafting with a bunch of girls that aren't interested in me. I didn't know which paragraph to put that sentence in.
Roller Derby
I was invited out to a roller derby. I thought "roller derby" meant we were going to put on some skates and skate in a circle listening to lame music on loudspeakers. That was incorrect. Roller derby means we went to a stadium to watch other people rollerskate. It is a sport. The league we attended was an apparently all female league, so I enjoyed that part of it. The sport involves two teams competeting against each other. The gameplay consists of them skating around in circles and shoving each other around. It must be an unpopular sport, because the announcers kept mentioning the fact that the arena was sold out with excitement in their voice--as if they needed some kind of validation.
The announcers, as well as some kind of cheerleader-like fat man wearing a dress and an ugly rainbow hat, detracted from the fun slightly. One of the jackass male announcers made some bullshit comment about men not being tough enough to wear roller skates and shove each other around like the girls were. I had a sudden desire to bash his face in with a pair of roller skates. Some of my friends think that these violent tendencies are a result of not making out with anyone for so long. I need to stop caring about what other people say; Mr "oh girls are so much tougher than us" probably got laid tonight. I didn't.
Overall, the sport seemed kind of cool, and more fun to watch than hockey (I feel asleep when I went to a phantoms game) but not great. There are some...holes in the rules that occasionally result in some obnoxious and retarded gameplay. Scoring is ostensibly simple, but in practice can be complicated and a bit fast paced.
The bonus, though, was that the half-time show was a drumline from a nearby high school. They were pretty good. They didn't have quints or quads or trips though; the only midrange drum was a guy with a single drum and it was vertical as if it was one of the base drums.
Oh, and no one uses their real names. One way of resolving your sport infereority issues might be to use people's actually names like in the big boy sports. I don't know if it is for safety, or if the people who invented roller derby were gamers, but the team names are like clan names and every player and official is addressed and referred to by their made-up handles, just like they were playing a video game. The handles/screennames themselves were more creative and intelligent than the ones you see in a typical FPS. Almost all of them were non-sexual double entendres. In fact, I think I counted two names that were not double entendres. If I played in that league, I would be tempted to use my real name just to be different.
Then again, it would be nice to hear my teammates call me The Dragon one more time.
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