The album is coming along swimmingly, and I think I'm up to nearly 5 tracks or so. I know, it's not a lot of progress for three months or so, but I'm a bit of a slowpoke. I will be releasing it on Jamendo, which both allows for free downloads, and donations. Later on, I'll probably send my tracks out to various other music services I use (SoundCloud, here, ACIDplanet, to name a few), but it will be released exclusively there first.

My dream is that I will also be able to release it through iTunes, to gain a bit more publicity that way. Other electronic music services are also not out of the question, but I'll test the market out before I actually try to sell the album. Again, I stress that it will be released through the CC license, which permits original ownership, yet allows for anyone to download and enjoy my music without the threat of piracy.

Also, I'm looking for a graphic designer to help me out on album artwork. If all else fails, I've got a few ideas in mind that I may be able to visualize, and perhaps a few other friend who would be willing to help me out, but again, professionalism is key.

Anyway, stay classy, Newgrounds.

First of all, a brownie point to anyone who gets the reference I made in the title.

Secondly, I've decided to start making music again. Again. Now that I'm in college, and finally settled in (for the most part, nothing too serious has gone down so far), and have a lot of time to kill during the day, I can focus quite a bit of time on producing music.

For those that are wondering, I currently use ACID 9.0, with a collection of loops that I am slowly expanding. I do have Ableton Live 8.2 installed, but I haven't gotten around to messing with it too much yet.

In other news, I'm working on my third novel, which is a steampunk/fantasy deconstructionist novel, while making quite a few references to pop culture, memes, anachronisms, and otherwise having a wonderful time with it. I don't know if I'm going to be able to post it anywhere (as it is going to clock in AT LEAST 50,000 words by the end of November) soon, but hopefully, I'll be able to post a draft somewhere online. I'm not too worried about piracy, as I have sufficient evidence that I've created it before anyone else has, so releasing it into public domain at some point is something I might shoot for.

Besides that, I'm posing a question to all (none) of you who read this: why does everyone on Newgrounds use FL Studio to make beats? It all sounds mildly derivative, and doesn't really make for a lot of innovation. I know you can download beatpacks, but for some odd reason, I just feel restrained while using FL Studio. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

We're checking out; got homework to do, and a novel to keep on writing.

Where did the last bloody month go? It's as if someone turned up the dial on my life ahead a few notches. I don't want my final year of high school to be over this quickly! I know how odd that sounds, but just think, after you leave high school, what happens? You either A: go to college, or B: go to work. In either case, you need money. Money for...what? Living expenses, recreational activities, forms of transportation, relationships (sometimes, I'm making an extreme generalization here), and other items based on need and the current situation. No matter the case, the fact remains that money drives your life. Let's take path A for a moment. You go to college, rack up a bunch of debt, stay in college to get a better job to pay off that debt, need a place to live/vehicle to drive/food to eat, etc., and so, you must continue working. You work and work and work until your debt is paid off, and then you need money to live off of after you retire. And then when that runs out, you go on state run programs (see what I did there? region-neutral. owned.), until you die. And then your surviving relatives must pay to have you buried (unless you're dumped unceremoniously in a ditch somewhere).

There are obviously different circumstances depending on your choice of career (i.e. soldier, government official, scientist, etc.), but the fact remains that we are motivated by money. Money is a factor in every situation, but there's nothing we can do to stop it. And it frightens me. I can only hope that someone comes up with a solution in our lifetime.

"And so, we move on, as the seasons grow old, as people change, towards the inevitable conclusion of our lives."

~Lego out. Version 3.

So, I've been working on a number of new pieces of music, and I hope to make an album in the near future (like, within the year or so). But the thing is, if I do, there won't be a cost involved whatsoever. I intend to spread both the individual songs throughout services such as ACIDPlanet, here, and...I don't really know where else. Bittorrent, perhaps, with a smattering of ISOHunt or TPB thrown in the mix. You see, I'm a staunch believer in the idea that music, or just about anything that you want should be available for use. Much like the Radiohead marketing method, you download it, and you decide just how much it's worth to you, and how much of your money it gets, except instead of paying me, you donate to a charity or something of your choosing. Just make the money worth it. That's all that I ask.

~ Lego out. Again.

I know, I'm one too, but that doesn't mean anything productive. We're quite insensitive, insecure, and are generally, bigots. I wish I was Canadian. Really, though, has anyone really looked at the number of Americans who are posting junk in the forums and BBS like "lolz we have never smoked that much weed before" and crap like this? And where do most of the crap-tastic flash submissions come from? You guessed it. I'm trying to draw a parallel that we think that we're automatically great at anything that we try, whether or not we've done it before. How many flash submissions do you see that have in the author comments box "dis is ma fist flash so dont rate it bad" or "plz rate 5 its my first try?" Honestly, if you have the free time to churn out crap like that, then put some work in making them something that won't make people like me want to gouge out my retinas. Not everything that you make has to be submitted to Newgrounds right away. This has been proved time and time again that people just submit stuff just so that they have a reason to be angry at someone if they write a harsh review or are not nice in the voting, so the same junk just gets recycled over and over again (FunTimeDanc eTime, anyone?), with no way to stop the flow of crap. You have friends, otherwise you'd probably spend all of your time on Myspace looking for people who'll claim to be your friends, so why not show them? Ask them for an honest opinion. Or upload it onto Youtub (I refuse to put on the last "e" ever since it became part of the Google Empire). There's no way you can go wrong there, because there's already so much crap that it won't matter. Compared to Youtub, Newgrounds is actually quite small. We will blam something that we find unsuitable (at least, I will continue to blam just about everything that crosses my radar), and at least, the ones with an IQ of more than 100, we will provide some sort of constructive criticism (unless you absolutely deserved it, like having the same picture repeat itself over and over to the same music) so that you can improve over your mistakes.

~Lego out~

On a note before I get started, I live in the United States of North America, so I'll be referencing events that specifically happened to the US of NA, mmmkay? So, last year was a real mess, if you think about it. Or so everybody thinks. People tend to overreact when it comes to things that are highly debateable nowadays. I'll just run through a few things that happened in the past year.
1. Al Gore declared, quite proudly, that by 2012, it'll be too late to save the world, and then went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his "work." No, not the Nobel Stupidity Prize, the Peace one. I'm just wondering how complaining about how humans have screwed up the environment can win you something as pretigious as that. I mean, if it was that easy, I would have done it by now, for Pete's sake (who is Pete, and why do we use that phrase anyways?), but no, because I'm just another face in the crowd, I don't get noticed at all.
2. It was the year of the OS (operating system for the non-technically minded) this year. After the long wait, Vista came out in January, and it was every bit as buggy as people expected it to be. Although, ironically, the author of this post is using XP Pro at the moment (go figure). Several versions of Mac OS X were released, yet there still is an entire generation of Mac users who are waiting for their first exclusive game. KDE (a Linux desktop enviro) 4.0 was released, not on time, along with another version of Ubuntu. Linux still remains at the bottom for share of the computing market, which won't change for several years.
3. Jack Thompson unsucessfully tried to stop the release of Manhunt 2, after it was downgraded from AO to M. Clive Barker's Jericho was also banned in Germany for excessive violence, I believe. The Wii is still suffering from system shortages, but the DS still is managing to outsell the 360 and the Wii (whether or not combined, I don't want to say), and Sony posted massive losses...until they dropped the price on the 40GB PS3, and stopped making it at the same time (anyone else get the connection there?).
4. Revolutions, assassinations, and utter chaos, oh my! The monks in Myanmar unsucessfully revolted against the resident dictator there, and Iraq remained the bucket of quicksand it's been for a while. In the closing days of 2007, Benazir Butto was assassinated, giving the bored conspiracy theorists something to talk about while we looted their houses. America still disagreed over Iraq, but we seem to be agreeing that almost everyone hates our current president (I however, support him, even though I've been a Democrat for the longest time).
5. And lastly, the natural disasters section. California was turned into toast for quite some time over the summer/fall, and FEMA still did what they were expected of: nothing. Apparently, the majority of the wildfires were started by people, not global warming/irregular weather patterns (stick that in your pipe and smoke it, environmentalists) as most believed. The Northeast was hit by some very cold weather and a lot of snow, making all of the poor schmucks stay in one place for a while, and even Texas and Oklahoma got some snow (global warming my foot), and here in the grand state of Minnesota, we had the most snow on Christmas in over 50 years. And one of our bridges collapsed, sending the conspiracy theorists into an uproar, and making a bunch of people with too much time go around and make executive desicions on the quality of bridges like: Awesome, Great, Good, Not Good, The Elmer's Glue isn't working, and ZOMG!!11!.

That's all, folks.