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Updates

Some dancing updates. I’ve now passed somewhere around 7 13s. Infernoplex, Indulgence, Boss on Parade, Bat Country, Mechanical Love, Operation Evolution, Shooting Star (12/13?), The Fate Of. I’m going for passes on Above The Winter Moonlight (first Dragonforce) and Beast and the Harlot (first 14) tonight and tomorrow and whenever else I play. I’ve gotten about 60% into both of them before failing (more due to leg endurance than stamina in both cases). Just gotta stop sucking. Pretty pumped for both of these. Footspeed is slowly improving as I can comfortably combo anything of about 165 bpm and I’m getting better at FAing 160 and below. Just an FYI 160 bpm = 2.67 quarter beats a second. Considering I’m talking 16th notes you’re looking at about 11 steps a second, or 13 steps/second for 200 bpm which is what ATWM is. Too bad that’s nothing compared to the dude who’s probably considered fastest in the world (http://www.youtube.com/user/Sigatrev). YEA DAD YEA.

Wisdom

In Proverbs, Solomon (and Lemuel) write extensively on the application and appreciation of wisdom. In Proverbs 1:7 he writes that “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” What does this say about us? For one thing, I think it’s telling that our appreciation of learning is slowly degrading. We are constantly bombarded by information from multiple sources, tv, the internet, radio. The world that we live in is connected 24/7, and yet despite that, the information that we pay the most attention to is inane and thoughtless. Celebrities, politics, and other human interest stories dominant newcasts without ever having a real effect on our lives. Does it really matter who wins in an election when both candidates will do the exact same thing after being elected? In the same manner I wonder why we are so caught up in the lives of people who we will never meet while our own lives are but a shadow of what they could be. Rather than spending time making our own existence better, we live vicariously through the fake tween heartthrobs on the Disney channel, or the scripted existence of reality tv. The current information age is like The Matrix without all the wires attached to us. And one cannot help but notice the irony of criticizing pop culture through a pop culture device. It’s like listening to System of a Down because you like their musical style and find their message intelligent.

Slowwwww

I’m going to try to update this fairly regularly now, which I know at the moment sounds like nothing more than an empty promise. I figure that writing regularly will enable me to escape the trap of feeling like I must be expansive in order to satisfy my goals. Short and to the point, hopefully with a dash of preciseness thrown in, is a better recipe for my own success.

Spacial Relationships

One thing that often strikes me in our human relationships is just how little we tend to analyze the cause and effect relationship of our actions. It’s pretty easy mathematically to determine correlation, and thus to at least infer causation, but things get a lot trickier when the human element is introduced. For example I have recently discovered that one of my personal acquaintances is embroiled in a fairly ugly feud stemming from a series of unfortunate choices. She seems completely caught up in the immediate problems that the feud are causing, but she seems unwilling to address, or at least unaware of the original problem. That is, that she did some stupid stuff. The real question though is why she did these things. I can only guess at her actual intentions, but it would seem to me that in the process of growing up, she lost sight of whom and what she is and chose to pursue a straw man. This is certainly not a unique problem; as we humans are distracted every day by the bright shiny objects that we depend upon for our happiness and self-worth but which really only distract us. Our problems are of our own making, it is only once we realize this that we will be able to address them. Paul had it right when he wrote “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” We will go nowhere focusing on symptomatic issues, true maturity can only be reached once we have let go of our own pursuits.

YAY 13s

Some progress as far as dancing goes. I finally passed a legit 13 last week, which I was super pumped about, and since then I’ve passed 3 more. Infernoplex is a pretty standard and well known 13, and features some pretty long runs at 175 while being about 4 minutes long. That being said once you get past about 40% in you’re not gonna hit anything too tough. I then passed Indulgence and Boss on Parade the next day, followed by Bat Country a few days later. As far as my overall goals are concerned I’m going to have a hard time getting to where I want to be for the summer. I would be happy to pass even 1 Dragonforce song, but so far I haven’t gotten past 30% in either Above The Winter Moonlight or Reasons to Live. I’ve got 12 days to figure it out.

Did some dancing today. Nothing too special

Finally passed Energizer with a 71...I've failed it multiple times with higher scores (including once with a gold combo until the stepjumps...yea) but I'm fine with that for now. The slowdown and second half of that song kill me.

95.57 on Xuxa...got gyped out of my first * on an 11. I tried it again afterward and had worse FA...I'll get the star eventually.

That's about it...still need to work on footspeed...bleh.