I’d like to thank God, my Dad, and my Psychology teacher Mrs. James for inspiring this.

“There is a well established principle in the social sciences which states that whenever the cooperation of two people is enlisted towards the completion of some task that is of equivalent importance to both (and which cannot be successfully completed except through the close cooperative enterprise of the two people), those two people will come to like each other, they will become friends, and their values, attitudes, goals, etc., will tend to become increasingly similar. This is known as the principle of the superordinate goal.”

An Atheist was on Bill O’Reilly, tonight, and he was a seemingly nice guy, but Bill and he had their disagreements and what not. He was very respectable, but a good point was brought up before I left to go to Olivia’s house. O’Reilly brought up the fact that mass muderers like Stalin, Hitler, etc. were all undoubtedly Atheists, which is true and a valid point. The guy on his show simply came back with the fact that Atheism is not the reason why they killed people.

This is where some may get offended, but I was thinking, “They were Godless! There was no reason not to channel their anger into people they hated! There was absoloutely no valid reason to respect them as individuals in their minds, because in their minds, all of these people were the cause to their problems. They were the reason why their lives were not as prosperous as they could have been.”

Now, God doesn’t always exactly cure people of the willingness to sin, but he does do one thing if you have faith! He gives you direction. When there is no direction to go in life, you can always take one which is to try to sin less! It is a great goal, and part of it is to spread the word. This word. It will bring you nothing, but happiness, even if it takes personal sacrifice.

Spreading the word is where other people become involved. And this is where the superordinate goal comes in. All people should come together and listen to the real message of peace sent by God! And I say this not as my God, but your God, our God. Whomever/whatever that may be regardless of the fact that we sometimes call it God, or Allah.

Some say “give peace a chance,” but anyone who says that as the stereotypical liberal hippy must understand that there is a lot more to that statement than it sounds. If you are a stereotypical, liberal, conservative-opposing, peace lecturing hippy, then look at your feelings towards someone like George Bush, or maybe some other more extreme person like Ann Coulter! I bet your feelings do a great job of resembling your teachings about peace! Same goes for any red-blood, true blue conservative American. Are you doing a good job of spreading Jesus’ real message of peace? Or are you maybe to centered on the fact that people should suffer lawful consequences of not following it? Sure… this and that maybe right according to religion, but since when has force worked to get people to cooperate?

Our only answer is to accept God’s goal that he has set for us; to work together for a common goal that none of us can achieve without the others’ effort: act more like Jesus. If you play your part in this goal by making your life a work in progress by eliminating hate, lust, and greed, your life will be so much happier!

If you’d like to know anymore about it, read the Bible! Or maybe there’s something else written in different words that can tell you the same thing! Either way, God sent the message here in multiple ways to be read! Find the one that you can best understand!

This being said, regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum and what you think is the right thing to do, whether it be a civil freedom or an economic freedom, our Government should not legislate upon that. Our Government should legislate on that 1) individual rights must be conserved and 2) if some person’s decisions clash with the first principle, the Government shall act accordingly to protect the first principle.

Well, slowly things are coming together with music production. I’m too impatient. There are things that I really need to get in order to start making money off of recording.

I want to record my friends’ band Westfall so badly. I don’t have much of the equipment I need for it, though. There’s just so much. A mixer, the drum microphones, the microphone for vocals, the cables, the microphone stands. Once I have all these, I could pull off some awesome stuff.

Other items that will gradually enhance the system are a new computer, and if the mixer was a firewire mixer which would be a little pricier, and having ACID pro. After all that, the sky’s the limit for me. If I could pull together a thousand dollars somehow, or slowly build up to that, it would work out perfectly.

Right now, I’m recording a demo for Mike. It’s his band Cheshire. We have two songs completely finished and hopefully we’ll have the others finished by next weekend. They sound pretty awesome, but all it is is plugged in guitars. That’s all I can really pull off right now.

The mixer is necessary because for drums, there are a ton of microphones needed to record. I could do it with four to seven microphones. I’m looking for something around $300 or under with 8 XLR inputs (those are just the kind of cable that a microphone uses).

The wanted microphones list is composed of 2 pen condenser microphones for cymbals or acoustic guitar with the microphone stands. I could find some pretty cheap ones that would do the job for probably around $150 for the set. A large diaphragm condenser microphone for vocals. I found a 3 pack that includes 2 pen condensers, the large diaphragm condenser, a shock mount for the vocal microphone, and a pop filter for vocals and acoustic guitars for $180 at IRC.

And then the drum microphones. I already have 1 that would serve as the snare microphone. But I need 3 more of those and then a large diaphragm dynamic microphone for the bass drum. I can find 4-packs all over the internet and in every music shop pretty much for decent prices.

So, that all adds up to about $730 and then I’d need 2 more microphone stands and cables which could add up to like $200 at most. I guess I have some financial figuring out to do this summer. I know I’m probably going to be getting enough money to buy a car for graduation. Hopefully, I’d have some left after that. Then, my birthday money could make a good chunk of it, and I’m going to work for the high school and make somewhere around $300 for that. I’m sure I’ll be able to pull it off somehow. I just need patience.

It hit me at lunch the other day when Drew said to me, “you have one more semester… and then you’re done.” We laughed about it and what not. It’s pretty insane to think about. All of what I know that life is about looks like it’s getting ready to turn. It sucks that I can’t help, but to take it for granted. I think that I appreciate school, and I get a lot of out of it that most people don’t, but the fact that it makes me happy, I think I take for granted. One more semester. That’s it. This one went by so fast, and I know this next one is only going to go by faster. The ascent out of winter always goes by so quickly for me. The spring is always amazing for me. It sucks that it’s probably only going to hit me during finals second semester.

Last spring was so amazing. Summer of 2005 to spring of 2006 was the most fun, authentic, no worries year of my life. It was so incredible. I was always spun by things that will never get to me again. What I want to do is when I go to college, I don’t want to lose touch with the underclassmen, and I don’t want to lose touch with the teachers. I’d actually love is there was some way I could stay involved with Greenwood High. Also, I don’t want to just drop out of my social life, and I want to keep my motivation for learning burning. I hope that I never “get old” in those terms.

In spring, I want to be a kid. I want to get a band started with McClain and Evan McNeff. Next summer, I would like to get the/a band going. I’d like to do a lot of recording. I’d like to make some money, but not get a “real” job. In fact, my goal is to never have a “real” job. I think I can pull it off. As long as I’m doing something where the value of¬†the “doing” always towers over the “earning”, I think I’ll be able to reach my goal.