so, i play the guitar too…

you may or may not have known.

since we moved last year i haven’t been playing with my band quite as much as i’d like. things just pull everyone in different directions, you know? in any event, i went back through some archived stuff and pulled out a couple of old recordings that i still thought sounded halfway decent. then i thought, “hey, let’s stream them from wordpress, because wordpress is so awesome there MUST be a good plugin for this,” and so i went looking for one.

i don’t know how good it is, but i’mmagonna try it anyway. let’s see if it works at all. if you see a little player thing between the two dashed lines, it’s working. you do need javascript turned on.

if you DON’T see anything, leave me a comment and tell me your setup (browser type and version).

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Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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The Denial of Death

so hey, let’s get morbid.

basically the human organism is unique in that it knows, without a doubt, that its life is finite, and that it will someday die and cease to exist.

this is a burden unshared with any other life form on the planet.

i read a book a long time ago that gelled a lot of seemingly disparate concepts in my head about mortality, and finding meaning in life:

http://ken-gilbert.com/the-denial-of-death

find a copy and read it. that’s my public service announcement for the day.

yes, i was in the navy…

see if you can find waldo!

my induction day at the u.s. naval academy in annapolis, maryland was on july 9th, 1991. i was 17 years old.

my reason for going was pretty simple: i had been accepted. in high school i had considered a bunch of different colleges, and talked to some folks my parent’s age about where they’d gone to school. one guy i respected quite a bit told me he had applied to annapolis, been accepted, but never went, and that he had regretted not giving it a shot. that made a big impression on me.

the application process to a service academy is rigorous. i had to get a full medical physical, take a physical fitness test, go talk to some congressmen and convince them that i was worthy, fill out a lengthy application form, etc. it basically takes almost a year, and is a commitment in and of itself.

so when brown university made a big mistake and declined having such a pillar of the intellectual community as myself attend, i decided it was time to join the fucking navy.

as it stood i was there for about two and half years and learned a LOT of stuff before i was discharged for busting my skull (which is another story). i have no regrets, either about going there or coming home.

i uploaded a few more pictures here.