Chiptunes!

Just thought I'd share some of my favorite chiptune albums, mainly because I'm bored... and, oh yeah... I JUST GRADUATED!


Power Supply by Anamanaguchi

 



Error Repeat by little-scale

NEUTRALITE by Disasterpeace

Sassy Wisdom by OxygenStar

Quiet Songs For Computer People by Falling For A Square

To All Compassion Gives

The Mouse's Petition,

 Found in the Trap where he had been confin'd all Night.

by Anna Laetitia Aikin

OH ! hear a pensive captive's prayer,
For liberty that sighs ;
And never let thine heart be shut
Against the prisoner's cries.

For here forlorn and sad I sit,
Within the wiry grate ;

And tremble at th' approaching morn,
Which brings impending fate.

If e'er thy breast with freedom glow'd,
And spurn'd a tyrant's chain,
Let not thy strong oppressive force
A free-born mouse detain.

Oh ! do not stain with guiltless blood
Thy hospitable hearth ;
Nor triumph that thy wiles betray'd
A prize so little worth.

The scatter'd gleanings of a feast
My scanty meals supply ;
But if thine unrelenting heart
That slender boon deny,

The chearful light, the vital air,
Are blessings widely given ;
Let nature's commoners enjoy
The common gifts of heaven.

The well taught philosophic mind
To all compassion gives ;
Casts round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives.

If mind, as ancient sages taught,
A never dying flame,
Still shifts thro' matter's varying forms,
In every form the same,

Beware, lest in the worm you crush
A brother's soul you find ;
And tremble lest thy luckless hand
Dislodge a kindred mind.

Or, if this transient gleam of day
Be all of life we share,
Let pity plead within thy breast,
That little all to spare.

So may thy hospitable board
With health and peace be crown'd ;
And every charm of heartfelt ease
Beneath thy roof be found.

So when unseen destruction lurks,
Which men like mice may share,
May some kind angel clear thy path,
And break the hidden snare.     

Everyone and all their beliefs, and no one really knows what's going on.

Sartre on Freedom

Thus, in the name of that will to freedom which is implied in freedom itself, I can form judgments upon those who seek to hide from themselves the wholly voluntary nature of their existence and its complete freedom. Those who hide from this total freedom, in a guise of solemnity or with deterministic excuses, I shall call cowards. Others, who try to show that their existence is necessary, when it is merely an accident of the appearance of the human race on earth--I shall call scum.

Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism

La Souris

            I can’t remember which room is mine. I must be at least a hundred steps in. If only this building wasn’t so odd. There are no floors, just random doors with random numbers, lining the staircase like arbitrary picture frames, only one of these frames is my home. In fact, everyone lives in these frames. They have to. Surely I’ll recognize mine when I see it.

            I kept moving one step at a time, slow and attentive, trying to recall the number on my door, of which I hadn’t the slightest clue. Maybe they were picture frames. Maybe there were no numbers but pictures instead. What was mine? A family portrait would make sense, but I am not married. Perhaps a headshot of myself, then? If I was bold enough I’d paint my own picture – one that said more than, “You’re alive!” It would tell me what I care about, what my passions are. If I was zealous about shoes, perhaps if I was a cobbler, I would paint my favorite pair of Sunday loafers, the ones I’d wear to meet with God – the only ones capable of withstanding a divine presence and not being wholly burned up. Of course, I am not religious, nor do I care much for shoes, but I tell you, after a long day of whatever it was I did, the picture welcoming me home would remind me why I ever left in the first place.

            As I continued climbing, I decided that pictures made more sense than numbers and started looking for anything I could identify with. The first picture I saw was a small, dark archway resembling a mouse hole. Who could fit through that tiny door? Just as I was about to move on, the door opened and a petit brown mouse cautiously crawled out. It is a mouse hole! He looked up at me, to the left and right, then back at me. “Hello, little mouse,” I said, but he did not reply. I wonder what he’s thinking. He wrinkled his nose, as if his whiskers had picked up a signal, and scurried between my feet and off into the distance.

I got back to thinking as I moved onward but was again interrupted as traffic in the stairwell began to congest. It wasn’t like a traffic jam, still and corrosive. It was restless and violent, more like a glass overflowing. People were marching impertinently both ways, banging shoulders and checking others without remorse. I flattened my back to the wall and waited for the rush to calm before carrying on. As I stood with my neck cocked to one side, I noticed an old man being pushed around from the corner of my eye. When the area cleared, his head was roosted on a step with the rest of his body sprawled below. He either fell or was forced down and apparently had no energy to get back up. Perhaps he was injured. I should check on him. “Are you alright?” I said, still against the wall.

            He tilted his head to look at me but did not respond. You could tell he was puzzled by my gesture. Maybe he’s been alone for years, and this is the first time in a long while that someone has paid him any mind. Or maybe he thought I was a picture on somebody’s door. What an odd display, he might think. Circus-folk must live there or perhaps a ventriloquist. I came off the wall and leaned closer to him. “Where do you live?” I asked.

            He looked at me with stale eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I left there years ago, before I was twenty.” He rocked his head to a more comfortable position and shut his eyes. “I was very different back then. I was just out of school and giddy with freedom. I wanted to have adventures. Every night I would dream of some new excursion and spend the whole next day planning it out. This lasted for months, begetting one grand, innocent conquest. And afterwards, I thought, I’d like to fall in love.” He paused for a moment and opened his eyes. “But here I am, still trapped within these rotten walls. I never found the way out, but I never stopped looking. I got lost in this dismal hall; the black goes on forever in both directions. Given time, the darkness even attacks you, taking you prisoner to the chipped and languished wooden stairs.” He turned his head once more and looked me in the eyes. “We are bound to this place, and so I yearn for death. Only then will these walls crumble. Only then will I be free from confinement.”

            His eyes fluttered and shut, and his head rolled to one side, but he was still breathing. I guess I’ll leave him here. I don’t really have anything to say. I went on my way, but I didn’t think of home. Everything was mournful. Every door I passed could be that old man’s. All these empty graves, all these dreadful deaths… Death was all I could think about. I thought of dying, that final moment before you go. I tried to imagine not existing, and the feeling it evoked was surprising. It was not bleak or frightful. It was exhilarating, a sudden rush of the fullness of every sense leaving your body. It felt like infinity, like I finally understood the universe. That’s what I want behind my door. I want to step inside and stand on a singularity before it explodes. I want to witness the billions of years of despotic collisions of matter that led to this point. I want to know what caused this thought. I want to stand beyond the horizon, from the Maker’s perspective, and watch the world unwind.

            I stopped for a moment and looked around. The walls were cracked and dry, and the steps were full of splinters. Everything was disenchanted. There were no pictures anymore. The numbers were back. Stupid, meaningless numbers. I read the ones within my sight. Three hundred and ninety-one. Four hundred and twenty. Two seventy-five. Their order confused me, and I became slightly disoriented. I could hear someone’s footsteps in the distance, but they soon stopped. Maybe he encountered the dying old man, and maybe that old man is telling him the same story he told me. Maybe, in ten or so minutes, I’ll be standing next to a complete stranger, drained and forlorn. We’d be stranded together between lifeless doors, with no consolation. The dizziness worsened.

            I don’t want to go home anymore. I don’t even believe in home. Maybe the old man’s right. Maybe I should just sit and wait for death. I turned around and pulled my pants to my waist, preparing to sit, but on my way down there was a cheerful pitter-patter that broke the silence. I stopped in an awkward squat, and as the noise came closer, it was accompanied by a muffled squeaking. A brown mouse came bustling out of the darkness flaunting a rich piece of cheese. He went under my rear and between my feet and stopped on the step in front of me. He stood up on his hind legs and stared at me with beady eyes, content. “Hello, mouse.” I stared back at him and shyly asked, “Do I know you?” I was suspicious of the mouse but not in a bad way. He used his tiny hands to hold the cheese steady and started gnawing at its middle. He quickly ate through it and dropped a piece in front of me. Then, without a word, the little mouse plopped back on all four and left me here, hunchbacked and ambivalent.

La tristesse durera toujours.

Charade

We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we want to remove our make-up and take off what is false and be real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouth are bent. And so we walk around, a mockery and a mere half: neither having achieved being nor actors.

Rilke, The Notes of Malte Laurids Brigge

Living Graves

Living Graves

by George Bernard Shaw 

We are the living graves of murdered beasts,

Slaughtered to satisfy our appetites.

We never pause to wonder at our feasts,

If animals, like men, can possibly have rights.

We pray on Sundays that we may have light,

To guide our footsteps on the path we tread.

We’re sick of War, we do not want to fight –

The thought of it now fills our hearts with dread,

And yet – we gorge ourselves upon the dead.

Like carrion crows, we live and feed on meat,

Regardless of the suffering and pain

We cause by doing so, if thus we treat

Defenseless animals for sport or gain,

How can we hope in this world to attain

The PEACE we say we are so anxious for.

We pray for it, o’er hecatombs of slain,

To God, while outraging the moral law.

Thus cruelty begets its offspring – WAR.

I resent my species.

Humans fucking suck.

Is there any reason to assume the universe had a beginning? The human experience has a beginning, but humans are mere physical consequences. Is the universe really eternal? Thoughts, anyone?

born
abused
lost
found
accepted
rejected
accepted
rejected
lost
broken
found
loved

Root Cellar

Root Cellar by Theodore Roethke

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

You make yourself look tall in your photos, but I know you're not. I know you're my size. You can't hide it; I've seen proof.

I resign to the fact that I will never meet you, now come on, Kierkegaard...

"I don't believe in love anymore."
"What? Why not?"
"It's stupid! It's hopeless. It's all so hopeless."
"Well, I don't think it's hopeless."
"Okay, well, think about yourself. Think about your flaws, everything about you that you hate."
"Hey! I'm perfectly content with who I am. I mean, everyone's hum-"
"Everyone hates themselves. Everyone wishes they were different."
"......"
"Now imagine you're in 'love.' That person hates himself, you hate yourself, and you're supposed to love each other? Give me a break. We're all so fragile, bound to break and fall apart. That's why love is hopeless."

I've been alone this whole time.

Dragging Afloat

You're smiling like you're happy, but you're really smothered and hopeless, worried of being alone for the rest of your life. Know that I'd take you and your thoughts and your aberrant moods... I would take you and be with you and talk about confusion and purpose. I'd show you my darkness, and I'd look into yours, and if we couldn't find any light around us... I suppose I'd hold your hand.

Untitled Prose 5

What happened to that glint of darkness, the sad shadow always tugging at your shirt? Where is your struggle, your intellectual grief? I can't tell if it's raining or not, and you don't care anymore. You've finally given in. Is there anyone honest enough to commit to a lousy existence?

I am a two-faced bearer of death.

In An Instant

In an instant the world fell silent. No murmur of birds or meaningless chitchat; only the sound of life squeezing itself out of me.

The Big Orange Love

Let's sing our favorite orange song,
The one that plays in dreams
Of sand and tides and sunfast
Sheets before the day goes brown.

You'll meet me if I want you to.
Low buzzing and resonant chimes,
Infatuated with such a
Transient hum.

Cursory darkness, then orange
Again. You carry me with big hands.
Boardwalk, warm togetherness and
The blue below, abiding in rage.

Its cool breath is pulling me in,
Out of your love, towards
The end of our song, but
You keep on smiling.

You smile into the dark,
When I fall and splash
Blue and black and sink
Into the crying deep.

But you're still there, smiling
And waiting and humming in
Orange and yellow. You know
I always come back.

I saw you turn red from me.

As one puts a handkerchief before pent-in breath-
no: as one presses it against a wound
out of which the whole of life, in a single gush,
wants to stream, I held you to me: I saw
you turn red from me. How could anyone express
what took place between us? We made up for everything
there was never time for. I matured strangely
in every impulse of unperformed youth,
and you, love, somehow had
wildest childhood over my heart.

Rilke, Uncollected Poems, p. 13

Stop smiling. Your face will get stuck, and you'll be sorry when your world turns to shit.

Resent

At once you seem perfect and flawless and contrary to every worldly thing, but you make wind feel like fire, surrounding and burning but never consuming. I'm wretched and fallen and lay melting at your feet, suffocating and reaching for your hand. Eventually I dissolve into the dirt beneath me and decay with the others fortunate enough to have lived this long. I wonder when you'll die, how and why. I think we'll share a fate of endless gloom and self-loathing. Hope is a trick of the devil.

Mercy is the Highest Law

I recently had my first exam for my New Testament Theology class. It consisted of an in class essay on one of three topics. I chose a prompt on the Sermon on the Mount, and it went so well I thought I'd share it. Remember, it was in class, so I didn't get a chance to edit or revise anything!

Without further ado:

    In Matthew 5:17-20, Jesus makes three claims that drive the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. The first claim is that he came to fulfill the Law, not abolish it. The second claim is that he will properly interpret the Law, establishing a hierarchy of the least and greatest commandments. The final claim is that he will make one able to surpass the righteousness (justice) of the Pharisees and enter the kingdom of heaven.

    Before showing how these claims are realized in the sermon, it is necessary to establish the hermeneutical key. This key is found in Matthew 7:7-12 and is commonly known as the Golden Rule. It states that you should treat others as you would have them treat you. This means that mercy, forgiveness and reconciliation should be aspects of our daily lives. Jesus takes this simple rule further by saying, “this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Mt. 7:12) This is crucial. Jesus is explaining the whole point of the Law. Loving your neighbor as yourself is the greatest commandment, and every other law culminates to this one.

    To understand this better, consider the first pericope in Matthew 5:21-48. Each pericope is a group of verses arranged in a triad of three points. The first point states a traditional reading of the Law, the second explains how the targeted evil can only be contained by the Law and not resolved, and the third point is Jesus’ transforming initiative for overcoming the specific evil. So, in the case of the first pericope, found in Matthew 5:21-26, the traditional reading of the Law is, “’You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’” (Mt. 5:21) The targeted evil is murder, but it cannot be resolved because anger and hatred amongst people lead to murder and are worthy of the same punishment on their own. The third point magnificently illuminates how Jesus is re-interpreting the Law. He says that instead of bringing your brother to court, make amends with him and be reconciled to him. Show him mercy and forgiveness. The Golden Rule overrides the lesser law of taking your brother to court, thus the hierarchy of the Law is established, keeping reconciliation as the main point and goal of the Law. Every pericope is structured the same way and exemplifies Jesus’ proper interpretation of the Law.

    Jesus is not preaching these things as some abstract, unobtainable virtue or perfectness. Instead, he is building and shaping a physical community that lives by his “New Law.” This community is not like the Pharisees, who carry out every minute detail of the Law without mercy, completely missing the point. They surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees by living by the Law the way it was intended, through reconciliation. The Beatitudes are proof of this, describing an eschatological picture of justice where the merciful are shown mercy, the meek inherit the earth, and the peacemakers are called sons of God. The Pharisees do not possess these attributes, but Jesus’ followers do (or are at least taught to). They are more just than the Pharisees, and “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt. 5:10)

    By re-interpreting the Law and showing the people how to follow it by example, Jesus is fulfilling it. This fulfillment of the Law is embodied in the prayer Jesus prayed and taught us to pray found in Matthew 6:7-15. This prayer beckons a literal heaven on earth. It encourages us to forgive our brothers and avoid temptation. God’s name is the most exalted, and His will is what we ought to seek. This prayer is the culmination of Jesus’ “New Law” and describes a righteousness that far surpasses that of the Pharisees. Jesus fulfilled it by teaching it and living by it. It is now up to us to follow in his footsteps.
 

Untitled Prose 4

It was embarrassing, that moment of the night where every spree of independence and newfound freedom ended with one act of divine rebellion. The wine glass danced from star to star as you twirled with eyes shut against the twilit sky. So much for a revival.

Catch My Death

"Save my skin, I need a medic
    Hold me down, I'm only sewn down
    Save my teeth, show me you meant it
    Catch my death, I'm only sewn together

    My eyelids are heavy, and the night's wearing on
    Your story's familiar, and your innocence is gone
    We'd burn like the morning then break like your heart
    Fall in love without warning just to fall back apart
    All fevered and blistered, with nothing at stake
    I feel the warmth of her whisper, and the cold of my mistakes
    Her soul in the balance, my heart in her hands
    I made her a widow, she made me a man"

We Know Who Our Enemies Are - mewithoutYou

Untitled Prose 3

What is this endless blur? Everything conflates into a violent wind of nothing that cleaves and tears at your naked face as it rushes by to assail the next defenseless person unwillingly thrust into this vicious cyclone known as thought. We are eternal, cursed and afflicted; not one is left to die.

Ugly

Ousted with fire, barred from His kingdom, cast into the derelict mire! Stars, you despotic stars, let fall in your stygian wilderness droplets of seraphic light! Let rain cosmic tears, piercing the voracious cloak of God with a searing presence too painful for any sight of ghosts. Burn with me, apparition dearest. Think of my hand laced with yours and let your body die. For we are nothing, mere phantoms in the nether.

Untitled Prose 2

Sometimes I feel doomed alone, like the couch-thinker hopeful, curled with her crutch. She loves her, and she needs her. She clings to her and follows her to sleep. Summer consoler. I have no substitute, and soon you will join me. You dress yearning, wanting, aching, hoping, fearing. I have the same routine, dreamer. It just won't happen.

Small Talk Sucks

I ache for deep and meaningful conversation.

Aristotle's Naturally Just War for Slavery... Yep

Bk. I, chap. 8 of Aristotle's Politics is littered with complex ideas and notoriously difficult notions. These include slavery, war, justice and the natural. In this particular piece of literature, Aristotle explains that some people are born as natural slaves. Their natures are such that they are instinctively (naturally) submissive and compliant. From Aristotle's other works, such as the Republic, we know that these slaves are the blood in the veins of society. They take care of the dirty work (farming, cooking, cleaning, etc.) so the Greek citizens can spend their time philosophizing and debating about politics, virtues and the higher qualities of life. Concerning the obtainment of these slaves, Aristotle is famously quoted in the Politics bk. I, chap. 8 as saying, "the art of war is a natural art of acquisition." [1256b1137] What he means by this is that war can be justified if its end is the acquisition of natural slaves. Of course, this doesn't mean that anything goes; there is still a strict set of ethical rules that must be followed. So, not only is a war for slaves justified (a seemingly warped notion on its own), but it's natural.

What bugs me is that Aristotle also posited a notion of "natural law" and "natural justice." They each refer to the natural order of the world - the way things were "meant" (I'm not implying a divine creator here) to be. The reason that acts like murder, rape or lying seem wrong is because they are not part of the natural law. They are inherently unjust. Now, it seems to me that there is a problem between Aristotle's notion of natural justice and his idea of a naturally just war in pursuit of slaves. The problem is not that slavery is unjust, but that stealing is unjust. Indeed, it seems that the only reason one would have to wage war for slaves is because one would need to steal slaves from someone else (a different nation or empire, of course). So, assuming theft is not a quality of natural justice (admittedly, I am not aware whether or not Aristotle specifies what natural justice is, but I would guess that it aligns with the virtues, in which case theft would obviously be unjust), a war that aims to essentially steal slaves from someone else cannot be naturally just, as Aristotle claims it is. Perhaps I am missing something, but, if I have not made a terrible misinterpretation or unwarranted assumption, this is a searing contradiction in Aristotle's ethical and political theory.

Hey...

...is an embarrassing acknowledgment of my shameful self - a vulgar prod at my petty existence. Don't greet me.

A Year of Being Vegan

Well, a year and three days to be exact. On January 5th of last year I stopped buying anything that comes from animals - that's what being vegan means. I stopped eating meat, dairy, honey and other minor ingredients. I stopped buying anything with leather or fur (not that I wore much of either, anyway). And I certainly stopped buying anything that was tested on animals (again, not that I did, anyway). The way people treat animals is simply fucked. They raise them on unnatural diets full of chemicals and hormones in barns and cages where they oftentimes don't have enough room to turn around. Sometimes they spend their whole lives without ever seeing the sun. Male chicks in egg factories are thrown away like garbage, literally. Dumpsters will overflow with their petty figures. Animals with luxurious fur are skinned alive then thrown into heaps of other skinned animals bleeding and suffocating to one of the most painful deaths I can imagine. It's sick. Even if they were treated humanely, killing an animal for food when fruits, vegetables and grains could be used instead is completely unjustified. Everything about using animals for our own ends is backwards and twisted.

The meat industry is also the single worst contributor to global warming and environmental destruction. All the gasses from the animals and machinery that are crammed into factory farms, slaughterhouses and meat packing plants do more damage to the ozone layer than anything else. Waste and chemicals escape the farms and seep into local water sources, causing illness to humans and animals alike. No meat eater can call themselves "green."

I've learned a lot from being vegan. One important fact is that everything you hear about vegans and vegetarians not getting enough protein or other nutrients is a lie. You can't use that as an excuse. The only real deficiency we have is vitamin B12, but it is easily supplemented. Also, being vegan does not necessarily mean eating healthy. It was easier to eat healthy over the summer, having my mom to help cook and all, but a lot of food that you wouldn't expect to be vegan is, in fact, vegan, so eating healthy at school is still as difficult as ever.

Going vegan isn't as hard as you'd think, nor is it as pricey as everyone claims it to be. In fact, I think my average grocery bill is cheaper now. Eating out is hard, but you can usually find something to eat, though people will make fun of you and give you a hard time, and you will argue with many close-minded, stubborn dolts. Regardless, if you've any brain at all, please just take some time to think seriously about it. There are a million reasons to go vegan - even Biblical ones, if that's your cup of tea. If you want to know more, feel free to leave a comment or something.

"As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields."

Leo Tolstoy